Helen Curtin Moskey

Helen Curtin Moskey (March 27, 1931, Hartford, Connecticut – March 25, 2003, Hartford) was an Irish-American poet of dual U.S.-Irish nationality. In 1994, she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, with honors, from Trinity College (Connecticut), Hartford, Connecticut. Her senior thesis was titled A Kerry Ethnography: A History of the Descendants of Owen O'Sullivan Mors, Muingaphuca, Caragh Lake, Co. Kerry, 1926-1992. She subsequently studied poetry with several established American poets, including Mark Doty, Stanley Kunitz, and Yusef Komunyakaa; at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts; and at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Additionally, the Irish poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin 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, 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.

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