Eight True Maps of the West

by Bowen, Kevin

• ISBN13: 9781904556046
• ISBN10: 1904556043
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Dedalus Ltd

Summary

This collection draws upon Bowen's two previous collections--Playing Basketball with the Viet Cong, a Progressive Magazine "Pick of the Year," and Forms of Prayer at the Hotel Edison (both Curbstone Press)--and adds some forty pages of new poems. Earlier poems naturally focus on questions of war and peace but, as Bowen now spends a good deal of time in Ireland, there are several new poems dealing with the west of Ireland, and stories of family members who left or stayed behind. Bowen is Director of the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a recent recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Table of Contents

from ``Playing Basketball with the Viet Cong'' 1994
First Casualty	9	(1)
Cities of Dust	10	(1)
War Story for Pual	11	(2)
Rappelling	13	(1)
Ferry Crossing North of Hai Phong	14	(2)
Incoming	16	(1)
Temple at Quang Loi, 1969	17	(1)
Branded Kraits	18	(2)
Missing	20	(2)
Thien Quang Lake	22	(1)
The Arts of Love and Hydrology	23	(2)
Banking Lesson, 1970	25	(1)
Playing Basketball with the Viet Cong	26	(1)
A Conical Hat	27	(2)
On Mai Hac De	29	(1)
Song in the Green Light	30	(1)
River Music	31	(4)
from ``Forms of Prayer at the Hotel Edison'' 1998
Driving Home	35	(1)
Sailing to Thai Binh	36	(2)
Letter from the North	38	(2)
Pho Hai Ba Trung	40	(1)
Sunday at the Minaun	41	(1)
Inchemekinna	42	(1)
Because we Were not Home	43	(2)
A Granite Stairway	45	(1)
Father Segadeli Says	46	(1)
Francis	47	(1)
Forms of Prayer at the Hotel Edison	48	(1)
Buying my Brother a Suit	49	(1)
Brothers	50	(1)
For Myles, Who Communes with Planes	51	(4)
New Poems: Eight True Maps of the West
Once More Again	55	(1)
Brother Turtle	56	(1)
Meditation at the End of the Year	57	(1)
Dioxin	58	(2)
Ocean's Edge: Bunnacurry	60	(2)
Teddy Lavelle's	62	(2)
For the Old Woman by the Road	64	(1)
Compass	65	(1)
Because They will have to Leave	66	(1)
Night Walk: Hoan Kiem	67	(1)
In Yeats' Country	68	(2)
Willie's House	70	(1)
Helmets	71	(1)
Blues for a Base Camp Singer	72	(1)
Eight True Maps of the West	73	(21)
Climbing to Hung Temple	94	(3)
Feeding Anna Fuchs' Goats	97	(1)
The Le Thai Gardens	98	(1)
Aluminium	99	(1)
Borneo	100	(1)
War's Season	101	(1)
Death Comes to the Barracks	102	(1)
Shipwrights	103