Visitations

The poems in Visitations contemplate our search for belonging with a lyricism and restraint that magnifies their remarkable beauty and wisdom. Here is the voice of a thinker, observer, friend, descendant, doctor, survivor, a voice of integrity and honor. ＂The path is faint but unmistakable,＂ Ted McMahon writes. It’s a great gift to read a poet who finds the path toward human connection and follows it.

-Kathleen Flenniken, Washington State Poet Laureate emerita

In Visitations, Ted McMahon sings quietly where he’s learned to stand, near ＂that thin divide between the darkness and the light.＂ With humble deftness, through poems that make sheer the senses’ curtain, he lets us see who’s with us-by memory, love, devotion...-presences who may see us more easily. The poet’s grandfather in his ＂rough potato fields＂ might stand for our ancestors elsewhere, with whom, we hadn’t known, we were ＂holding hands.＂

-Jed Myers, author of Can’t Be Far and Learning to Hold

In Visitations, Ted McMahon journeys through fog and fierce winds to a quiet, sunny canyon and from a roughhewn chapel in Connemara to St. James Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. He journeys in grief for his losses, but is supported by ＂invisible friends,＂ hopefulness and his grandfather’s blessing, with whom he approaches the top, ＂the two of us holding hands.＂ Strong poems of searching. And finding solace.

-Jack Coulehan, author of The Talking Cure: New and Selected Poems