Scapegoat and other poems / Alan Gillis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gillis, Alan A., author.

Standardized Title:

Poems. Selections

Language:

English

Physical Description:

163 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First North American edition.

Place of Publication:

Winston-Salem, NC : Wake Forest University Press, [2016]

Summary:

Scapegoat and Other Poems displays the remarkable versatility of Alan Gillis's voice, the range of his subjects, and the perspicacity of his poems. He moves from the popular to the political, from the satirical to the lyrical, with exceptional ease and insight. In "Progress," "To Belfast," "Laganside," and "In the Shadow of the Mournes," Gillis reveals, like Derek Mahon and Louis MacNeice before him, his ability to plumb the depths of the complicated society of Northern Ireland. In the title poem, Gillis captures the religious and political implications of a society that too long has looked to find a scapegoat for its woes. From his first published poem, "The Ulster Way," he has turned social pressures back upon the self, exploring the limitations and possibilities of personal freedom. All this is in your head. If you walk, don't walk away, in silence, under the stars' ice-fires of violence, to the water's darkened strand. For this is not about horizons, or their curving limitations. This is not about the rhythm of a songline. There are other paths to fellow. Everything is about you. Now listen. Gillis can be scabrous and witty. Yet he also writes many tender and sometimes painful lyrics, as witnessed in these lines from "Approaching Your Two Thousand Three Hundred and Thirty-Third Night": "If there is a heaven it is chained to the earth / like flight to the air, a mirror to light, / air to the ground, rigor mortis to birth." Often, the love lyric and the poem of angst at the state of the contemporary world unite in splendid fashion. The Scapegoat and Other Poems will soon establish Alan Gillis as a major force in Irish poetry for American readers. Book jacket.

Contents:

The Ulster Way 1

12th October, 1994 2

To Belfast 5

Don't You 7

Deliverance 8

From Big Blue Sky and Silent River 11

Progress 15

Lagan Weir 16

From On a Weekend Break in a Political Vacuum 18

In Her Room on a Light-Kissed Afternoon 21

Among the Barley 23

Carnival 26

Bob the Builder Is a Dickhead 27

The Lad 31

Driving Home 34

Morning Emerges out of Music 39

Harvest 40

Death by Preventable Poverty 43

Laganside 44

Eloquence 50

The Debt Collector 51

In the Shadow of the Mournes 53

From In Whose Blent Air All Our Compulsions Meet 60

Down Through Dark and Emptying Streets 68

In These Aisles 72

Looking Forward to Leave 75

From At Dusk 77

The Green Rose 78

On a Cold Evening in Edinburgh 86

Approaching Your Two Thousand Three Hundred and Thirty-Third Night 92

Whiskey 96

From Here Comes the Night 98

August in Edinburgh 105

The Scattering 107

Lunch Break on a Bright Day 109

Zeitgeist 113

The Estate 117

Spring 120

The Allegory of Spring 121

The Return 126

The Field 127

The Hourglass 129

Before What Will Come After 132

Scapegoat 135

From A Further Definition of Memory 145

Morning 149

One Summer Morning 151

River Mouth 153

Night Song for Rosie 156

The Sweeping 157.

ISBN:

9781930630802

1930630808

OCLC:

960738359