By Philip Brady

Weal is the winner of the 1999 Richard Snyder Publication Prize.

[ Buy Now! ]

A powerful account of one man's journey through this world... One looks up from these pages a little wiser, a little more alert, a little readier to carry on.

- Richard Tillinghast

The poems in Philip Brady's Weal engage us with dazzling language and intellectual range and a lovely music.... These poems get around: from Brooklyn to Belfast; from Italy to Africa; from Youngstown, Ohio to an empty wing of the top floor of a hospital in Marin, where the poet's mother is dying.  One long central poem, "Lagos," is simply brilliant in its multi-faceted, multi-layered concerns.  Brady's voice is zany, rough and heartbreaking and Weal is full of wild surprises.

- Maggie Anderson

Brady offers a sojourner's panoramas and outstanding depth of field.  The poems present themselves as majestic, audible, dangerous rivers with live banks... Weal, a word of contradictory geographies, ranging from common good to whiplash scar, rings here around a hundred years of world migrations.  This is an unpredictable, demanding, strong book, each poem an exploration.

- Milton Kessler

About the Author

Brady's first book, Forged Correspondences, was chosen for Ploughshares' "Editor's Shelf" by Maxine Kumin. Winner of a Thayer Fellowship in the Arts from New York State, three Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, and residencies in Spain, Scotland, Ireland, and the Czech Republic, Brady has taught at University College Cork and the National University of Zaire. He is a Professor of English at Youngstown State University. http://www.philipbrady.com/