That Ship Has Sailed: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)
Description
That Ship Has Sailed synthesizes the serious and comic to address sex, love, loss, death, belief, the afterlife, and the past. The poems are honest and direct without sacrificing “the uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts” that Keats singles out in his notion of “negative capability,” alluded to in the title poem. Amplified by the poet’s work as a traditional Irish musician and composer, language is the adhesive that brings the work together across the avant-garde to traditional forms and meters.
Praise for That Ship Has Sailed: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)
“This book is so wonderful! In That Ship Has Sailed, Terence Winch gives us poems that bow to the relentlessness of time as he navigates world history and personal history. His writing is mature, elegiac, nostalgic, and wry. You’ll find wisdom and antiwisdom (via a villanelle), an especially sonic sonnet, a cento that grows like a flower, and a sestina that dances. Winch steers from operatic gestures to country music to ‘Poor Country,’ an exemplary anthem to our troubled nation. That Ship Has Sailed is the perfect getaway for all of us living with uncertainty— ‘ . . . To master / Life in the present is to be drunk on disbelief.’” —Denise Duhamel, author of Second Story
“Wit, warmth, style, passion, ingenuity, acumen, and spirit are poetry’s seven cardinal virtues. Terence Winch has them all. From the brilliant title poem that opens the book to the ‘Night Vision’ that pulls down the shades at the end, That Ship Has Sailed has the salubrious Winch effect; it makes me want to write poems. I’ve said it before, and I'll say it again: Terence Winch is caviar to the general—be that General Electric or Eisenhower—served with a magnum of Dom Perignon.” —David Lehman, author of The Morning Line
“Herein Terence Winch catches us up with his true Irish tuneage of the heart as he heads straight into the gale of being alive, unflinching, and unbarred. Weaving a language of merry melancholy, he suspends time’s measurement, folds us into a place where the flesh and blood of a present consorts with all manner of loves and ghosts of a past and then has a drink with you now. That Ship Has Sailed travels on waters of candid grace. I love this collection so much!” —Maureen Owen, author of Edges of Water
