Brendan Kennelly has chosen poems that give him a thrill or a laugh, poems that sing clouds or sunlight into his heart, poems that he is glad to read again and again for a whole host of reasons.The collection begins with Patrick Kavanagh's 'Innocence' and ends with his 'Peace'. Between these two lie Kennelly's own selection of the best of Irish poetry, from the grand masters Jonathan Swift and Thomas Moore to the great lyricists of the twentieth century, Yeats, Synge and MacNiece. The contemporary voices of Eavan Boland, Paul Durcan, Michael Longley and, of course, Seamus Heaney, are also heard.They're all here: sad poems, mad poems, funny poems, lonely poems, poems that demonstrate and celebrate the partitioned culture of Ireland, poems by and about women, poems that tell lies beautifully and truths clumsily, poems that sing the pains and joys of history, that tell of spiritual desolation, physical desire, remorse, love, myth, exile, homesickness, hatred, dreams, prejudice, nightmares, superstition, illness, health, war, religion, disaster and death. And all, all between innocence and peace.