Despite the relatively slender volume of his work and the obscurity that marked his brief life--he was known to his friends as "the Recluse"--the Cork poet J. J. Callanan (1795-1829) has come to be recognized as one of the most significant Irish poets writing before Yeats. Inspired equally by English romanticism and Ireland's Gaelic culture, and drawing often on the life of Irish-speaking communities in West Cork, Callanan's work negotiates with remarkable...