A true American demotic, is a difficult register, but here’s a poet able to tackle it.. Not since the late, great, Thomas McGrath has a poet spoken so clearly of working class life in its own true tone, as McEwen does here in grim stories from hardworking lives, unsparing, unsentimental but shot through with love and courage — not least the courage of unsparing truths from the dark intersections between Irish and American histories, so rarely spoken of, much less examined.