ABOUT THIS BOOK

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.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Terence Winch is the author of eight earlier poetry collections, the young adult novel Seeing Eye Boy, and the short story collections Contenders and That Special Place. He is the recipient of an NEA Poetry Fellowship, a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing, a Columbia Book Award, and the America Book Award, among other honors. The Bronx-born son of Irish immigrants, Winch is also a founding member of acclaimed Irish band Celtic Thunder and composer of the band’s best-known song, “When New York Was Irish.” Since 2020, he has served as editor of a feature on the Best American Poetry’s blog called “Pick of the Week.”

REVIEWS

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 anti-wisdom (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

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 cohorts 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

"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

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Part I. Old Life

That Ship Has Sailed

Preamble

A Woman Who Murdered Her Husband

Fallen World

Don’t Ask, Don’t Get

Election Day

Cancelled Flight

Submersion

A Visit from the Sisters of the Sick/Poor

Keeping Watch

Survivor

Father

My Father in the Afterlife

Work Around

Fishbowl

Microelectronic Sonnet

Me Too

Harbinger

Wavelength

The Custom

At the Museum

Displacement

Cake

Ceasefire

The Sweet Smell of Success

An Féar Gorta

Part II. You May Take One Giant Step

Great Sizzle

Return Engagement

Imposter

We Will Get Rich at the Funeral

Baby Shower

3 Acts

Watch Me Break Things

Discount Your Blessings

Reverse Osmosis

You May Take One Giant Step

Personal Inventory

Goodwill Pick-Up

Make Me

Flowering Cento

Wet Blanket

Test Results

The Crows

Dead Dog

Part III. Name Your Poison

A Conversation with the Future

Contains Coarse Language, Some Sexuality, and Disturbing Behavior

After Season 8, Episode 3, Game of Thrones

Country Music

Poor Country

JFK, Assassinated

Aristotle, Aquinas, and Descartes

Oppositions

Thanksgiving

Helen Vendler Ode

It Was Raining in the Capital

The Open Door

Ghost Dance Sestina

Night Vision

Acknowledgments

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