Summary
Polite Forms was written between January, 2008 and June, 2011. Although the whole sequence is, perhaps self-evidently, it is a meditation on family life written from the perspective of a man in his early fifties.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Polite Forms
- The Hairpiece
- Nana
- Expedience
- Box Three, Spool Five
- Writing
- Proper Nouns
- Strictly Private
- Pray for the Wanderer
- Vestments
- Dead Languages
- AZH 402
- Bardolino
- A Musical Life
- My Remarkable Uncle
- Something Blue from the Pines
- Intolerance
- A War Miniature
- The Nature of Things
- The Music Makers
- The Back Gardens
- Bucket and Spade
- The Rider
- Captain Extra Mild
- Notices
- School-Going
- Junior Infants
- The Conventions
- Night Prayers
- Sunday Mass
- Radio Sounds
- Avenues
- Fathers and Sons
- In Herbert Park
- Swimming Lessons
- Lost Things
- A Loanword
- A Farm Visit
- The Girl in the Frame
- The Men Who Left
- Messages
- Wedding Photos
- Notes and Acknowledgements
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Polite Forms
In the sixties, it was always ‘Mrs White’
And ‘Mrs Lyons’ behind the garden walls.
For years, until the hearse, it stayed that way.
Those conversations, lengthening in the halls,
Would deepen into love but never stray
Beyond the married surname. Then one day
My mother called her ‘Rachel’, just like that,
And ‘Sheila’, she replied. At once they knew
A girlish repossession of their own,
Distinct from those brisk husbands on the phone
Who frowned at this familiar pride in names,
Or felt the tug of ‘liberation’ games,
But never saw it coming, soft as air:
The end of married servitude was there.
Details
- Pages
- XII, 50
- Publication Year
- 2012
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781789970692
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781789970708
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781789970715
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781789970685
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2020 (April)
- Published
- Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Wien, 2012. XII, 50 pp.
