Meditations, With Distractions

At the center of James McAuley's 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 another, 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 St. Anonymous") to the scathing Celtic-style satire, "The Gingriad". McAuley is well regarded for his experiments with traditional forms and rhythms: herein are blank-verse narratives and elegies, a Haiku sequence (the result of an argument about Haiku); "Triptych" and other sonnets; a va

A Farewell to His Poems

1

(2)

Holyhead

2

(5)

A Famine Field in Kildare

Castletown House

3

(1)

Celbridge and Maynooth

3

(1)

A Famine Field

4

(1)

Conolly's Folly

5

(1)

Where You Are

5

(2)

A Shift in the Wind

7

(1)

Waiting Room (from Hospital)

8

(3)

Dry Well

11

(3)

Triptych

You Found Me

12

(1)

You Are Unloved

12

(1)

You Have False Friends

13

(1)

Breathing

14

(2)

The Sorrowful Mysteries

16

(1)

The Shirt

17

(1)

The Sacrament of the Tablets (from Hospital)

18

(1)

Brother Cornelius

19

(7)

Lifebird (from Hospital)

26

(1)

Cantata for the Feast of St. Anonymous

27

(4)

A Meditation, With Distractions

31

(2)

When the Corpse Directed the Funeral

33

(22)

God's Pattern

Condemned

34

(2)

Scourge

36

(1)

Cross

37

(1)

First Fall

38

(1)

Mother

39

(1)

Friend

40

(2)

Veronica

42

(1)

Second Fall

43

(2)

Sermon for the Women

45

(2)

Third Fall

47

(2)

Tango Magdalena

49

(1)

Garment

50

(1)

Ecce

51

(2)

Pieta

53

(1)

Miserere

54

(1)

Samarkand

55

(2)

Woman at a Window

57

(2)

After a Chorus from Mefistofele

59

(1)

Winter Drive

60

(1)

Miami Ars Poetica

61

(2)

Recovery Room (from Hospital)

63

(2)

Career Changes

65

(1)

Cardiac Arrest (from Hospital)

66

(1)

Nude with a Calla Lily

67

(2)

The Aviaries of Doctor Harbinger

69

(9)

Delivery Rooms (from Hospital)

Mater

72

(1)

Pater

72

(1)

Familia

73

(1)

Pace

74

(1)

Spiritus Loci

75

(1)

Sea Writer

Sands

76

(1)

Tides

76

(1)

Words

77

(1)

Walk in the Wild

78

(3)

Landscapes, with Interior

81

(3)

Easter, Key Biscayne

84

(2)

Discharge (from Hospital)

86

(1)

Self-Portrait, with Masks

87

(2)

The Gingriad: An Aor

Prologue

89

(1)

Pigtale One

89

(1)

Pigtale Two

90

(1)

Pigtale Three

91

(2)

Newt Goes to Pigneywood

93

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Meditations, With Distractions

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials