All Occasions [Paperback]

Walter McDonald (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

800 Acres On The Plains
Abandoned Shack In Bankhead National Forest
After The Children Leave
After The Random Tornado
All Dogs Are Pirates
As Time Goes By
At Dawn Withe The Blinds Raised
Backpacking With My Bride In The Rockies
Barter
Batting Practice At Sixty
Before The Glaciers Melt
Beside The Dark-sheened Water
Bogeyman, 1969
Boiling Shells At Kitty Hawk
Boys And Their Fathers' Shotguns
Bull-necked And Square-jawed After Saigon
But It Was Water
Chocolate
Cousin Eddie And The Jungle Trails
Diamonds In The Carnegie Museum
Facing It
Faith Is A Radical Master
Fire And Ice
First Solo In Thunder
Five Fathoms Down Off Hatteras
For Friends Missing In Action
Gigging For Frogs Before The War
Grandfather And The Boys He Knew In School
Grandfathers
Grandmother Bankhead's Lake
Growing Up By The Brazos
Hardscrabble, Tooth And Claw
I Still Can't Say The Word
In The Alchemist's Household
In The Shallow Molasses
Instant Replay
John Parker And The Captured Mount
Killing Nothing But Time
The Last Pullman To Houston
Leaving Sixty
Marching Through Georgia
The Midas Touch In Texas
My Father And The Sad Soap Operas
Old Pilots In The Crowd At Kitty Hawk
One Morning Between Wars
One Steep Switchback At A Time
Raising A Glass For Grandsons
Reading Ecclesiastes At Sixty
The Risk Of Having Children
Search And Rescue In The Mountains
The Second Time Around
The Songs Of Country Girls
The Summer Her Family Moved To Houston
Swaggering To The Flight Line
That Silence When A Mountain Lion Attacks
A Thousand Miles Of Stars
To The Tribe
Uncle Croom's Attic
Watching Dawn On Padre Island
Watching Parades In The Game Room
When Baseball Was A Game
When Rockets Fell Like Stars
Wings Tumbling Like A Torch
The Winter Our Grandson Turned Thirteen
Wishing For Friends From Childhood
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 101 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Notre Dame Pr; 1ST edition (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 026802006X
• ISBN-13: 978-0268020064
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,105,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great poetry for all occasions, March 16, 2001

By 

Victoria Dorshorn, English GTA, Emporia State... (Emporia, KS United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All Occasions (Paperback)

Emily Diskinson said, "I know it is poetry if I feel as if the top of my head has come off." Walt McDonald's collection, All Occasions, is that kind of poetry; his celebration of the ordinary moment turns mundane life experiences into significant events and transforms ordinary observations into profound ideas. In this collection, his skillful use of sound and diction go beyond his previous works as he continues to create fresh images to explore the experiences of childhood, war, marriage and family, ranching, life and death.

The collection contains 65 poems in five sections, each section more forceful and meditative than the one before. An elegiac tone characterizes the poems of remembrance, as in "Cousin Eddie and the Jungle Trails." These are flavored not with sappy sentimentalism, but with a pensive purity that stirs and satisfies. McDonald's aubades, such as "Backpacking with My Bride in the Rockies" and "Before the Glaciers Melt," are unique in that the lovers do not part in the morning, though a hint of time passing and a clear sense of place enhance the portrayal of the love relationship. McDonald includes a villanelle, "Gigging for Frogs before the War," and a slant-rhymed sonnet, "Hardscrabble, Tooth and Claw," among the free verse poems of various stanza forms. Internal rhyme and repeated key words set a pace that fits each poem.

As he is accustomed to doing, McDonald occasionally reuses titles from previous poems, dealing with the same theme on an increasingly more mature level, with magnified implosive power. Two such repeats are "For Friends Missing in Action" and "Leaving Sixty."

Whether recalling people, exploring relationships, or narrating events, McDonald makes casual moments sing with celebratory songs that echo emotion and evoke empathy. He uses language that snags the imagination like a fishhook, pulls, draws, and carries the reader along from line to line, stanza to stanza, like a rainbow stripped trout reeled in. "Boys and Their Fathers' Shotguns," in Section Three, is a poem about an accidental shooting. Word choice that maximizes assonance, consonance, and alliteration carries one through the poem and sends him back for a second read--not because it is obscure but because it is powerful and moving: because it takes the top of the head off.

If there is any weakness in the collection, it is only that a few poems are less than lucid, a little out of focus, like a boat in the fog--headed somewhere, though the direction is not clear. "After the Random Tornado" and "Fire and Ice" appear like wispy clouds whose main purpose is to accent the sky's blue hue. But even that is an occasion to celebrate.

McDonald's poetry just keeps getting better in form and content. This collection, All Occasions, is definitely worth buying.