Goat's Milk: New and Selected Poems

Frank Ormsby

• Publisher: Wake Forest University Press
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781943666041
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Frank Ormsby's keen eye is trained on numerous subjects: the unheralded country people in Northern Ireland, American soldiers stationed there during World War II, and the rich natural world of Westchester County north of Manhattan. However, these sympathetic poems are not untroubled observations. As Michael Longley notes in his introduction: "From early on something desolate and unsettling shades this poet's vision, counteracting his warmer compulsions." The Troubles of Northern Irish history hover in the margins of many poems, but are not central to the stories the poems have to tell—how life continues in its daily forms no matter what type of fate descends. There are poems of death and birth, love and heartbreak, but the voice behind the poems unites them in the simplicity of his telling. Ormsby's words are seldom flashy, but glow steadily with both transparency and assuredness.

Table of contents

• 3 Cleo, Oklahoma
• INTRODUCTION by Michael Longley
• from A Store of Candles (1977)
• The Practical Farms
• Landscape with Figures
• Wet Leaves
• Old Man on a Country Bus
• McQuade
• Calendars
• Sheepman
• My Friend Havelock Ellis
• Spot the Ball
• In Lieu of Carols
• Stone
• A Day in August
• Ornaments
• Winter Offerings
• Mrs G. Watters
• The Barracks
• Windows
• Moving In
• Floods
• In Memoriam
• Passing the Crematorium
• Aftermath
• Under the Stairs
• from A Northern Spring (1986)
• Travelling
• from A Northern Spring
• 1 The Clearing
• 4 Lesson of the War
• 5 The Padre
• 6 I Died In a Country Lane
• 8 I Stepped on a Small Landmine
• 9 For the Record
• 10 The Flamethrower
• 11 The Liberation
• 12 Maimed Civilians, Isigny
• 14 They Buried Me in an Orchard
• 15 The Night I Lost World War II
• 18 On Devenish Island
• 23 Darkies
• 24 The Convoy
• 25 A Cross on a White Circle
• 30 Soldier Bathing
• 31 Safe Home
• 33 From the German
• 35 Some of Us Stayed Forever
• 36 Postscripts
• Home and Away
• News from Home
• My Careful Life
• Dailies
• The War Photographers
• Street Life
• Survivors
• Incurables
• King William Park
• Home
• The Ghost Train
• Helen Keller
• Geography
• One Saturday
• The Gatecrasher
• The Gap on My Shelf
• At Stoke Poges
• The Graveyard School
• from The Memoirs
• In Retrospect
• The Photograph
• The Charlotte Gibson Bed
• from A Paris Honeymoon
• Lullaby
• The Heart
• The Names
• The Crossing
• The Easter Ceasefire
• Travellers
• Come As You Are
• Helen
• from Fireflies (2009)
• One Looks at One
• The Kensico Dam
• At the Lazy Boy Saloon and Ale Bar
• from Valhalla Journal
• 3 In Kensico Cemetery
• 4 After the Storm
• What Will Survive
• New World
• Two Birthday Poems
• 2 for Conor Walden
• Some Older American Poets
• On Not Hearing the American Nightjar
• from Catching Fireflies
• 2 After the Japanese
• 3 Firefly Hour
• 4 The Celtic Firefly
• The Aluminium Box
• Silent Reading
• The Rabbit
• Smiling Foetus
• The Hole in the Roof
• from City Journal
• Small World
• The Statues
• The Gate
• The Whooper Swan
• The Builder
• New Poems
• I.
• Photograph
• Vigil
• Winter
• Treasure
• Beauties
• Sim Sala Bim
• Bog Cotton
• The Listener
• Water
• The Dippers
• Holy Ireland
• Crossing the Border
• The Eleventh Hour
• Captain Richard Outram Hermon
• The Shoot
• The Crows
• Paris
• The Confession Box
• Blessing
• The Book Lovers
• The Tilley Lamp
• The Goats
• Judy
• The Last Train
• Tinkers
• Dawn
• Home Is the Hero
• Cold Cases
• Too Late to Ask
• The Darkie
• My Criminal Record
• In the Dark
• The Death of Brian Ború
• Wake
• Last Glimpse
• Remains
• II.
• The Second Joyful Mystery
• The Birds
• Forty Shades of Green
• Overdue
• For Gabrielle
• The Hour-glass
• The Zebra Fish
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE POET