The Lives of a Shell-Shocked Chaplain, Charles McCaffery, (B. 1920, D.1987): Poems (Visions and Prophecies, No. 1)

By harry-c-staley

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1879934434
• ISBN13: 9781879934436
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: St. Andrews College Press
• Length: 61 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

This is an important work.

Harry C. Staley has masterfully crafted an epic "novel" of poetry. An organic whole, not simply a book of verse, the "lives" of McCaffrey, the shell shocked chaplain, are the lives of each of us, lives born into innocence, fantasy, religious dogma, Hollywood movies,sports heroes, and media fabricated perceptions, but baptized in the unspeakable horrors of a century of war and empire. And, like McCaffrey, it has left us scarred in body and mind, searching for signs of hope in a sky filled with ominous clouds. The poetry richly and incitefully draws from philosophy, religion, classical antiquity, and the modern age to paint a tapestry of the "travels" of a single frail human from earliest childhood to dotage. In fact, McCaffrey's travels are our travels. The poetry poignantly raises issues of ontology, metaphysics, morality, and ethics, and our struggle as we confront them in a universe which has become at once inscrutable and all too clear..."boy gone, dream gone, balloon blown out all matter, ourself and anything, shrunk to senseless energy..." (From "About the Metal Box") This exciting work should not be missed.

Riveting

I love this book. Tender gentile emotion flows through the scattered bones of a life of one man in search of a cause or perhaps a moral core. This set of poems is more like an Odyssey, concentrating on the little nuances of an individuals life as he is tested by by an inner turmoil and the exterior tragedies of a World War. Professor Staley has a way of making a mystery out of every day life.