Rebecca's Reviews > The Whole & Rain-domed Universe

(3.5) Many of these poems are about the author’s Irish family inheritance, both literal and figurative, as in “Heritance”:

From her? Resilience. Generosity.
A teacher’s gravitas.
Irish stew. A sense
of the ridiculous. High ceilings.

I loved the first line of “Signature” – “When I finally gave up and became my mother” – as well as the first stanza of “Derry”:

I was born between the Creggan and the Bogside
to the sounds of crowds and smashing glass,
by the river Foyle with its suicides and rip tides.
I thought that city was nothing less

than the whole and rain-domed universe.

It’s particularly nice how enjambment often makes the thought go just that one line beyond what you expect. I’d read more from Bryce.