According to Dana Gioia, poet Tony Connor’s “work is both original and entertaining …. Connor does not simply report events, he vividly recreates them, shaping each scene with the skill and care of a novelist …. his work remains clear-headed, intelligent and immensely readable.”
Take for example this poem of heros and apathy, “Aftermath”:
Slumped in a prickly armchair
on a humid summer night,
I listened dully to dogs
barking with brainless pleasure
far away and in this street
under the Victory flags.
The bronze eagles with spread wings,
flightless on walls and porches,
reflected the light from stars,
as my slow imaginings
moved between foreign corpses
and these Stars and Stripes of ours.