Meditations, with Distractions: Poems, 1988-1998 Paperback - 2001
by James McAuley
From the jacket flap
At the center of this new collection--the work of over a decade since his previous book, Coming & Going, New & Selected--is the sequence, "God's Pattern," meditations on the Stations of the Cross, an old devotional form of pilgrimage or "pattern" still practiced in rural parishes of the poet's native country, Ireland. The meditations are interrupted by several "distractions," hence the book's title. Forming a more casual sequence of sorts, from a longish work in progress, are the poems from "Hospital," a mythic institution we all have to visit some time or other, where comedy and tragedy are also frequent visitors. Theme and treatment vary throughout the collection from somber reflection on the fate of a drunk in a cheap hotel room ("Cantata for the Feast of Saint Anonymous") to the scathing Celtic-style satire, "The Gingriad." McAuley is well regarded for his knowledge of experiments with traditional forms and rhythms; herein are blank-verse narratives and elegies, a Haiku sequence (the result of an argument about Haiku); a "Triptych" and other sonnets; a variation on the topographical poetry of the seventeenth century ("A Famine Field in Kildare"); even a carmen figurata ("Cross," "station" III of "God's Pattern"). The range of subjects is broad: "Brother Cornelius" recounts the life of a deaf-mute monk; "A Shift in the Wind" is about sailing; "Breathing" is, of course, about drowning. There are several poems of place, like "A Famine Field in Kildare," "Easter, Key Biscayne," "Holyhead," and "Samarkand" (which turns out to be a beach in Oregon). Childhood memoirs ("The Sorrowful Mysteries," "The Shirt") and painterly ("Self-Portrait, with Masks") or music-derived ("After a Chorus from Mefistofele") studies in verse continue persistent themes from McAuley's earliest work.
Details
- Title Meditations, with Distractions: Poems, 1988-1998
- Author James McAuley
- Binding Paperback
- Edition First Edition
- Pages 104
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Arkansas, U.S.A.
- Date February 2001
- ISBN 9781557287007 / 1557287007
- Weight 0.35 lbs (0.16 kg)
- Dimensions 8.53 x 6.01 x 0.34 in (21.67 x 15.27 x 0.86 cm)
-
Themes
- Cultural Region: British
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 00011645
- Dewey Decimal Code 821.914
Media reviews
Citations
- Univ PR Books for Public Libry, 01/01/2002, Page 87
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