Kirjahaku

Walt McDonald was named Texas State Poet Laureate in 2001. This is just one accolade in his distinguished writing career. He established the Creative Writing program at Texas Tech University, serving as poetry editor there from 1975 to 1995, and retired May 2002 as Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence. He was a member of the literature advisory panel for the Texas Commission on the Arts from 1986 to 1988. He won four Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and six awards from the Texas Institute of Letters (including the Lon Tinkle Lifetime Achievement Award). McDonald also received the 2004 Texas Book Festival Bookend Award for a lifetime of contributions to Texas literature. TCU Press honors his amazing career in this tenth book of the TCU Press Texas Poet Laureate Series. A master of the story and the subtle rhythm of the line, this prolific poet has had more than 2,300 poems published in journals and his twenty-two collections. From these collections, this book is born. These poems move readers on an elemental level—full of the hardscrabble of everyday life, yet infused with pure faith, reminding the reader that our lot is not easy in this world, but it is nothing less than glorious.

The life and work of poet Walt McDonald contains multitudes. A fighter pilot and Vietnam veteran who came to poetry late, Walt went on to publish over 2,000 poems in his career. His voice appealed to all kinds of readers. His poems appeared in journals ranging from First Things to The Nation, from JAMA to The Atlantic Monthly. He published over twenty books of poetry and served as the poet laureate of Texas.Turning on candid observation, quietly resonant sound, and a present narrative sensibility, Walt's poems move from a cockpit over Vietnam to the big West Texas emptiness and the Rocky Mountains. Beginning in 2019, Walt sat with his prolific collection of poetry and began selecting his favorite works, grouping them together in four distinct movements. The results are before you here in this comprehensive collection of a lifetime's effort. The Essential Walt McDonald is a must-have poetic opus, shaped by a giant of the Texas community of letters.

Award-winning poet Walt McDonald is well known for the skill with which he is able to transform ordinary language into poetry. In this, his eighteenth volume of poetry, McDonald returns to familiar explorations of his native Texas landscape and the struggle to integrate wartime experiences into the rest of life. The 65 poems in All Occasions are about a boy who later flies as an Air Force pilot, who marries a woman so lovely and loving he's stunned, who goes home after a war and discovers with friends and family what John Donne meant in one Christmas sermon: "All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons." The poems celebrate the wonder and need of all occasions, the heartache and longing and joy of being alone or loved—in war, in a cockpit at 40,000 feet, riding the range on a mustang, or in the arms of family. In "Carrion Comfort," Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote about "That night, that year / of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) / my God." In Part 2 of All Occasions, McDonald experiences that struggle in Vietnam and discovers over swift decades how deeply he needs friends, family, and God. Each individual poem is finely crafted, and together they comprise a powerful narrative. Masterful and wise, All Occasions is Walt McDonald at his best and his most affirmative.

Award-winning poet Walt McDonald is well known for the skill with which he is able to transform ordinary language into poetry. In this, his eighteenth volume of poetry, McDonald returns to familiar explorations of his native Texas landscape and the struggle to integrate wartime experiences into the rest of life. The 65 poems in All Occasions are about a boy who later flies as an Air Force pilot, who marries a woman so lovely and loving he's stunned, who goes home after a war and discovers with friends and family what John Donne meant in one Christmas sermon: "All occasions invite His mercies, and all times are His seasons." The poems celebrate the wonder and need of all occasions, the heartache and longing and joy of being alone or loved—in war, in a cockpit at 40,000 feet, riding the range on a mustang, or in the arms of family. In "Carrion Comfort," Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote about "That night, that year / of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) / my God." In Part 2 of All Occasions, McDonald experiences that struggle in Vietnam and discovers over swift decades how deeply he needs friends, family, and God. Each individual poem is finely crafted, and together they comprise a powerful narrative. Masterful and wise, All Occasions is Walt McDonald at his best and his most affirmative.

The poems in Climbing the Divide celebrate with praise and amazement the wonders and risks of wilderness and family, of friends before and after the war. The boy in these poems grows up during World War II, feisty in spite of losses and the harsh, hardscrabble land where he lives. Surrounded by heroes, he learns ranching and faith from parents, extended family, and neighbors. In pilot training and war and back home with friends and memories of friends missing in action, he finds delight with his wife, who makes "magical hammocks at bedtime" for their children. Despite heartache and rage, they discover more hope and joy than they thought possible while growing older—jogging at 65 in winter, hiking grizzly country with bells, and "climbing the divide," knowing they're nearer each day to "the dark, hollow halo of space."

The poems in Climbing the Divide celebrate with praise and amazement the wonders and risks of wilderness and family, of friends before and after the war. The boy in these poems grows up during World War II, feisty in spite of losses and the harsh, hardscrabble land where he lives. Surrounded by heroes, he learns ranching and faith from parents, extended family, and neighbors. In pilot training and war and back home with friends and memories of friends missing in action, he finds delight with his wife, who makes "magical hammocks at bedtime" for their children. Despite heartache and rage, they discover more hope and joy than they thought possible while growing older—jogging at 65 in winter, hiking grizzly country with bells, and "climbing the divide," knowing they're nearer each day to "the dark, hollow halo of space."

Who more than the Southwesterners who've boldly claimed their home under the same tornado skies could have more cause to celebrate the millennium? And a celebration is exactly what Neugebauer and McDonald have forged in the historic photographs and poems they've paired to tell the story of the settlement and so much more. Eighty-three photographs from Texas Tech University's Southwest Collections bounty of more than 500,000 reflect needs basic to all humankind: food, clothing, shelter, government, recreation, and spirituality. McDonalds new and selected poems connect to the moments in time that the photographs preserve, but evoke stories that focus on the scope and quality of life both then and in the century since ranching and farming came to the region. 'By yoking together those people separated by decades, the authors say, we hoped to show more harmony than contrasts between generations, between bold pioneers and their blessed inheritors at risk, but singing on the same wide plains, under the same tornado skies, the same vast thousand miles of stars. This millennial masterpiece is actually a prequel to their earlier collaboration ""All That Matters: The Texas Plains in Photographs and Poems"" and the culmination of a vision the authors say they have shared for almost a decade. The Price They Paid for Range Bone white caliche undercuts our dust. Most trees dry up, stunted on starving roots. To save imported stumps, we ditch the fields with peat imported from swamps, tamp bone meal into dirt for roses. Cactus rode here as burrs with soldiers, their Spanish ponies stumbling under the sun, dumping knobs of seeds from weed fields miles away. Wind taught our fathers how to survive so far from forests: build low and far apart and ration water. Let stallions and cattle be enough, rough bunks and windmills the way to pray, cow chips for fire, cactus and rattlers the price they paid for range and a thousand miles of stars

This title is written by 2005 SPUR Award Winner. A West Texas starscape, stunning by any measure, is emblematic of Walt McDonalds plains. A lifelong celebration culminates in this, his best - and perhaps last - collection of new poems. At seventy, the poet affirms, we live by the mystery of grace even as we watch familiar stars blink out at dawn. For he believes God knows we are dust/and counts our steps. In ""Leaving the Middle Years"", he writes, At our age/every day is grace and every breath/a blessing. Life is grass, stunningly brief/but abundant in so many ways. Walt writes about heroes - a mother who taught tumbling; family and friends gone to war; the brave at home who heal or console; and, others who rescue from war zones as many children as they can. Heroes, too, are those whose fidelity and joy find faces in these poems. Watching crows at dawn in Montana, a husband thinks of his wife inside their mountain cabin: if Ursula finds more gray shell go on humming, knowing its okay, our children three thousand miles away but fine, when they called last night. She comes outside with coffee, closing the door so softly even the crows dont stop.

A West Texas starscape, stunning by any measure, is emblematic of Walt McDonald's plains. A lifelong celebration culminates in this, his best—and perhaps last—collection of new poems. At seventy, the poet affirms, we live by the mystery of grace even as we watch familiar stars blink out at dawn. For he believes "God knows we are dust / and counts our steps." In "Leaving the Middle Years," he writes, "At our age, / every day is grace and every breath / a blessing. Life is grass, stunningly brief / but abundant in so many ways." Walt writes about heroes—a mother who taught tumbling; family and friends gone to war; the brave at home who heal or console; others who rescue from war zones as many children as they can. Heroes, too, are those whose fidelity and joy find faces in these poems. Watching crows at dawn in Montana, a husband thinks of his wife inside their mountain cabin: If Ursula finds more gray she'll go on humming, knowing it's okay, our children three thousand miles away but fine, when they called last night. She comes outside with coffee, closing the door so softly even the crows don't stop.