Pastorals, Peter McDonald's third collection, is his first full-length book of poems in eight years. At its heart are poems that approach places, times, and states of mind 'part history and part escape'; here, past and present can answer to one another as elements in a contemporary mosaic of knowledge and invention, memory and entertainment. McDonald sees in these situations a modern pastoral. The personal and the public interact in many of these poems; others address personal histories and their creative consequences, alongside religious and mythological motifs. Subtle, compelling, and memorable, McDonald's poems combine a tenderness and gravity of thought with a sharpness of observation which gives the wide canvass of Pastorals its distinctive power.