Right now the men put aside
Their composing sticks
And settle by the hellbox
Chatting in groups
That never seem to vary
From, day to day.

from 'Bad Impression' (The Hellbox)

Greg Delanty's seven collections, brought together in a single volume, along with previously uncollected poems, reveal his resourcefulness and engaging wit. Delanty explores common experiences -- family life, love, friendship, the natural world and the political world -- in unexpected ways. He weaves together the idioms of his native Cork with the language of modern America. The poems range over Ireland, the United States and India, drawing on their different inheritances. Delanty's poetry is a sequence of metaphors, evoking the subtle interconnections of past and future, people and places.

This volume includes Cast in the Fire (1986), Southward (1992), American Wake (1995), The Hellbox (1998), The Blind Stitch (2001) The Ship of Birth (2003), and the most recent collection Aceldama, published here for the first time.

'A true poet' Christopher Ricks, The Guardian

Table of Contents

News in Flight xiii



Cast in the Fire (1986) and Southward (1992)

Preludes

Out of the Ordinary

Thrust & Parry

Nightmare

Below 'The Devil's Punchbowl'

Out of the Blue

Below Zero

Dawn

A Common Story

Tie

Interrogative

Leavetaking

Epistle from a Room in Winston-Salem, North Carolina

The Master Printer

Setting the Type

The Emigrant's Apology

Complaint to the Watchmaker

The Brothers

The Rising

Home from Home

The Unknown Citizens

The Fable of Swans

The Lizard & The Lover

Two for Joy

An Oil Spillage

The Scarecrow

The Worrier

On Returning

A Wake on Lake Champlain

Beach Time

Observations by a Pond at Dusk in Gainesville, Florida

The Loudest Sound



American Wake (1995)

The Fifth Province

After Viewing The Bowling Match at Castlemary, Cloyne, 1847

The Heritage Centre, Cobh 1993

The Yank

Economic Pressure

Tracks of the Ancestors

In the Land of the Eagle

America

Vermont Aisling

On the Renovation of Ellis Island

Backfire

According to the Horticulturist, It Is Unlikely Our Fuchsia Will Survive Winter

Though the World is Gone Mad

Williams Was Wrong

On the Marriage of Friends

While Reading Poets in their Youth

Keeping Distance

Prospecting on Abbey Island

At a Low Ebb

The Shrinking World

The Splinters

The Children of Lir





from Children of Chernobyl (1996)

To Belarussians after Chernobyl

The No-Go Land

Live

Janus



from The Fifth Province (1997)

Spiritus Hiberniae

Film Directions for the Underworld



The Hellbox (1998)

The Compositor

The Cure

Passing the Evergreen Bar

The Composing Room

^

White Spirits

Bad Impression

Modern Times

The Printer's Devil

Striped Ink

Ligature

The Broken Type

The Lost Way

We Will Not Play the Harp Backward Now, No

The Hellbox



The Blind Stitch (2001)

To My Mother, Eileen

450ºF 124

A Cork Prothalamium

Homage to the God of Pollution in Brooklyn

Elegy for an Aunt

Little India

The Emerald Isle, Sri Lanka

Ululu

The Stilt Fisherman

The Malayalam Box

Pathetic Fallacy

The Travelling Monk

The Palindrome Stitch

Prayer to Saint Blaise

Behold the Brahmany Kite

The Greater Body

The Family Man and the Rake

The Phone Bird

White Worry

(The hummingbird)

The Bindi Mirror

International Call

The Leper and Civil Disobedience

Lepers' Walk

The Speakeasy Oath

Tagging the Stealer

The Memory Quilt

Heron and Li Po on the Blackwater

The Blind Stitch



The Ship of Birth (2003)

The Alien

Paper Light

According to the Nepalese

Morning Watch

Sonogram

Sound Kinetics

Sightings

The Expected

The Air Display

The Great Ship

Apology to Crickets

The Sea Horse Family

Hero's Return

The Shutterbug

The Soul Hunter

Snow and Wind Canticle to an Unborn Child

The Foetal Monitor Day

The God of Dry Mouths

The Present

For the Record

The Third Trimester

The Turtle Mother

Black Snow

The Neo-Natal

The Coronation

The Ship of Birth

From Woody's Restaurant, Middlebury

The Arrival

A Circus

To My Mother

Late Entry

The Language of Crying

Posthalamion

The Green Room

Chemotherapy

Fontanelle

The Ink Moth

The Joker Family

The West

The Wave

The Birds

The Skunk Moths



Aceldama

Mother

Washing My Mother

The Last Coiffeur

The Hanky

In Times of War

US

Loosestrife

Esperanto

Opening Up

Shopping for a Composter

Ur God

The Natural World

The Earth Tearer

The Jar of Effulgence

Aceldama



Notes

Index of titles

Index of first lines