Farewell To America is most definitely a classic ‘zeitgeist’ collection of poetry, of its time and for such a time as this. Steve Huenneke has come as an immigrant bringing his diversity and his culture and thereby has enriched ours with a very fitting reply to the ‘America ‘ he left, and the ‘America’ he saw coming.
Deirdre McGarry
Editor, Wexford Women Writing Undercover
For me, these are haiku of hiraeth, it is this that connects all of them in Farewell To America. This body of work is a body that can house two hearts. There are so many ambivalent references to the America of Steve Huenneke’s imagination and the America of his experience, which suggests his attempt to understand his own transatlantic sense of home as well as homelessness.
Dominic Williams
Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David
Steve Huenneke's Farewell to America is an ode of affection, nostalgia, and grief for the Missouri and the America of the past, encapsulated in a collection of one hundred haikus. The "Farewell" of the title is not just a reference to the physical leaving of his home place but to the very existence of, as is now evident, the illusory Land of the Free.
Deirdre Wadding
Founder and Teacher,
COIRE SOIS
School of Irish Spirituality
Despite its brevity, there is no way the haiku can be considered a slight form. It lends itself so well to the pithy phrase or a moment of significant insight. Of course, when several of them are gathered, the laser-like lens of the haiku widens and is intensified. All of this is apparent in Farewell To America, this collection by Wexford’s adopted bardic son Steve Huenneke.
There is a genuinely forceful and pervasive democratic spirit at work and on display across this collection. The world is chaotic and needs some civilizing wisdom and insight, this is the context of this work.
Dr Derek Coyle
Carlow College/St Patrick’s
Author of Sipping Martinis under Mount Leinster (2024)