Autumn Beguiles the Fatalist

Traversing the welter and squalor of London, Paris, Madrid, Rome and New York, celebrating afresh the familiar and mundane - bread, soap, matches and snails - Foley's latest collection culminates in a powerful sequence of poems that looks at age, mortality, loss, failure, disappointment and envy with unflinching honesty, wry humour and, ultimately, affirmation. "Autumn Beguiles the Fatalist" retains the qualities praised in Michael Foley's earlier poetry - disconcerting candour, rhythmic vitality, mordant wit and readability.