Research Catalog

Title

Blessings the body gave / Walt McDonald.

Author

McDonald, Walter.

Publication

Columbus : Ohio State University Press, [1998], ©1998.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 109 pages; 23 cm

Summary

The moral landscape to which David Citino refers is informed by the experience of war. These poems deal with the loss of Walt McDonald's father in World War II as well as with his own experiences in Vietnam. They tell of living with the memories of war, of celebrating and coping with the fact of survival, in the context of love of one's family in a place at once harsh and beautiful.

Contents

• My Father on His Shield -- The Winter They Bombed Pearl Harbor -- Crossing the Road -- Uncle Douglas and the Whirring Blades -- Baptizing the Dog at Nine -- 1945 -- Uncle Bill and Guns -- Aunt Linda and the Pink Bikini -- Cars Flash by on the Highway -- For Donavon, Missing in Action -- One Summer before Saigon -- The Fox All Winter Long -- Marriage Is a Bungee Jump -- Uncle Earl's Wind River Ranch -- Before Children -- Adoption -- What Old Pilots Say -- Rocket Attack -- The Track at Saigon -- My Cousin and the V.A. Nurse -- The First Months Home -- With Mercy for All -- Spitfire -- The Night I Left the Air Force -- Halfway between the Gulf and Mountains -- Traveling in Packs -- After the Lost War -- The Moves a Body Makes -- Song for One-Armed Cowboys -- After the Fires We Once Called Vietnam -- A Cabin, Even a Cave -- Losing It Again in Bozeman -- East of Eden -- Sleeping with the Enemy -- Again This Winter -- That Child Abandoned on the Porch -- How It's Done --
• Whatever It Takes -- Leaving the Scene -- Praying for Rain on the Plains -- Old Pets -- Learning How in the Southwest -- Gardens of Sand and Cactus -- Weeding the Strawberry Garden -- Where the Fence Goes -- In Gusty Winds That Wild -- Jogging with Oscar -- Sympathy -- In Dickey Country -- Voices on Jukebox Wax -- Cataracts -- For God in My Sorrows -- Fishing with Uncle Walter in World War II -- Fathers and Sons -- When the Children Have Gone -- Catching My Grandson -- Anniversary: One Fine Day -- Grandfather's Pocket Watch -- Stones Grandfathers Carved -- Twins and Oral History -- The War in Bosnia -- River of the Arms of God -- Blessings the Body Gave -- Wild Ducks Floating By -- All We Do Is Already History -- Alone in the Tundra -- To Have and to Hold -- Where Buffalo Grass Grows Loud If We Listen -- The Waltz We Were Born For.

ISBN

• 0814208045 (alk. paper)
• 0814250041 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

98029035

OCLC

ocm39347269

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries