Helen Curtin Moskey was an Irish-American poet of dual U.S.-Irish nationality. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in English, with honors, from Trinity College (Connecticut)

Trinity College (Connecticut)

Trinity College is a private, liberal arts college in Hartford, Connecticut. Founded in 1823, it is the second-oldest college in the state of Connecticut after Yale University. The college enrolls 2,300 students and has been coeducational since 1969. Trinity offers 38 majors and 26 minors, and has...

, Hartford, Connecticut, and studied poetry with several established American poets, including Mark Doty

Mark Doty

Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist.-Biography:He was born in Maryville, Tennessee, earned his Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont.In 1989, his partner Wally Roberts tested...

, Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Jasspon Kunitz was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.-Biography:...

, and Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa is an American poet who currently teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for Neon Vernacular and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also received the Ruth Lilly...

, and at the Fine Arts Work Center

Fine Arts Work Center

The Fine Arts Work Center is a non-profit enterprise devoted to encouraging the growth and development of emerging visual artists and writers through residency programs, to the propagation of aesthetic values and experience, and to the restoration of the year-round vitality of the historic art...

 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Additionally, the Irish poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is an Irish poet born in Cork .-Life:Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is the daughter of Eilís Dillon and Professor Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin. She was educated at University College Cork and The University of Oxford. She lives in Dublin with her husband Macdara Woods, and they have one...

 was a friend and advisor. Moskey’s work appeared in occasional compilations of poetry. At the time of her death, she was preparing a volume of her selected poetry for publication.

Her experiences as the child of an Irish immigrant mother; her extended stays at the family ancestral home at Muingaphuca, Caragh Lake

Caragh Lake

Caragh Lake is a large and scenic lake in County Kerry, Ireland.-Ecology:The lake is included within a large Special Area of Conservation, ....

, County Kerry; and her experience as a mid-century American woman who raised five children through the intense social transformation of American life from the post-war era to the 1970s, were powerful influences on the tone, style, and subject matter of her poetry.

WAKING TO MORNING IN MUINGAPHUCA (1994)

In Memory of Aunt Kate

The fierce buzz

of two black horseflies

mating

over my bed.

Lace shadows

on cement floor,

sunlight

through Irish crochet.

Two goats bleating objections

to my car in the yard,

flee from me

as I open the kitchen door.

A creamy cow grazes

near moss-grown walls;

her calf bumps her udder

with its milk-stained snout,

juts its tongue for the long teats.

There is a calmness

on this rocky land.

My heart tells me

I should stay here forever.

Copyright © 1994 by the Literary Estate of Helen Curtin Moskey.