What You Want

by Maureen N. McLane

National Book Award finalist Maureen N. McLane stuns with a precise, perceptive book of poetic meditations.

In her first book of poems since the scintillating More Selected Poems , Maureen N. McLane offers a bravura, trenchant sounding out of inner and outer weathers. What You Want is a book of core landscapes, mindscapes, and shifting moods. Meditative, lyrical, alert to seasons and pressures on our shared life, McLane registers and shapes an ambient unease. Whether skying with John Constable or walking on wintry paths in our precarious republic, the poet channels what Wordsworth called “moods of my own mind” while she scans for our common horizon.

Here are poems filled with gulls and harbors, blinking red lights and empty lobster traps, beach roses and rumored sharks, eels and crows, wind turbines and superhighways. From Sappho to the Luminist painter Fitz Henry Lane, from constellations to microplastics, What You Want is a book alive to the cosmos as well as to our moment, with its many vexations and intermittent illuminations.

In poems of powerful command and delicate invitation, moving from swift notations to sustained sequences, this collection sees McLane testing what (if anything) might “outlast the coming heat.” And meanwhile, “There’s no end / to beauty and shit.”

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

Published May 7, 2024

Reviews

[Sam Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, I am so happy to have gotten advanced access to this wonderfully produced book of poems. I thank Maureen N. McLane, NetGalley, and FSG Books for sending What You Want my way. This beautifully curated selection of thoughts and moods throughout our narrator's daily life moves acted as a pleasant reprieve in between books about murder, gore, and horror. What You Want is set to hit shelves on May 2, 2023, and I look forward to more works by this lyricist.

[Kendra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great collection of poems that deal with the ephemeral and the everyday all at once, and honestly so. McLane writes without censoring--or at least it seems so--and that makes her work feel very real in an earth(l)y way. She reminds us that poets can make words that can wrap around anything--lobster traps, stoplights, paintings--to give readers a new way of seeing and hearing and thinking about the world around them.

[earlydecember · Rating 4 out of 5]

What You Want is a collection of lyrical poetry that explores an age-old artistic fascination: nature. Most poems are about the natural world, from animals to landscapes, and often reference philosophers, painters, and poets who explore similar themes. The tone of voice is very self-aware and, at times, self-deprecating. The language is melodic, with the occasional unexpected rhyme that rarely feels out of place.

Unfortunately, McLane’s writing style and poetic voice are a bit too esoteric compared to my usual reading. As a result, it was hard to understand some poems. There were pieces, like “Mud Season” and “Crows,” that I enjoyed. Because of that, I will pick up a physical copy of this book when available. It is typically easier to decipher difficult writing when I can annotate and take notes. Hopefully, then I will appreciate this book more. Right now, I am rounding up from 3.5 stars to 4.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the digital ARC.

[Varnika Thukral · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Elaborate fantasy a defense against reality or a part."

While reading this book recently amid my exams, it felt more of like a breeze in a closed room. The books and poetry do amazing and the continued picturesque descriptions and lucid ideas to open discussions alongside the boat analogy the whole road down was something I thoroughly enjoyed.

What felt off, was at some points the book can use tiny revisions, some parts feel choppy while the other travel along just fine. Maybe, it's just me but at points it's was tough for me to be able to understand and interpret the references made by poet.

The book is an enjoyable read and can work upto being better. I would recommend a revised version, maybe it was just that the ARC version was not edited, but I would love to recommend it to anyone who is a fan of description in their reads. This book has definitely something worth checking out.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Self-Reliance"

Winter. Late January
afternoon. Night falls fast.
You think I should know this

by now. I am just
not feeling it the joy
I should be feeling—

the joy we are supposed
to feel we
who are alive!

Life! Life!
Well. My preferred pronouns
are we and we and I

sink into the self
at my risk. Our
s. O dialectic!

Lyric, society,
plurality, yo.
O the ’90s!

Here are the hemlocks
stern as Adorno,
thrusting into the fading blue.

A dust of snow
shook down on me.
We are within hearing

of traffic. Within
sight of a latrine
autocorrected just now

to Latina.
Is it my software
or me that’s racist?

The difference?
The difference
is spreading

said Stein not Einstein
though she thought
herself an equal

genius. My given
name autocorrects
to moron. The car

become self-driving car
is a retronym. Everybody's
autobiography too...... (23-25)

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not tend to live in poetry, and I am definitely biased, but even as I floundered to find my footing sometimes, I enjoyed the play and seriousness and beauty and awe and hard stares that this book offered. As someone who struggles with the complexity of understanding wanting, (what I want, what you want, what we want) and this very human weirdness/sameness, I enjoyed contemplating this (directly and indirectly) through Maureen's prose.

I also gotta say, I LOVE the cover. It's a great encapsulation of how I felt reading the poetry in some ways... there's the play (an X on the horizon line... is this a negation of infinity? boundary between sea and sky? the scene in general? And such punctuation of color feeling!), the sea, the aesthetic blur of the leaves... very evocative.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gloriously about water, gulls, clouds, the tilt of a season (all while I'm up there on the roof, watching gulls and water and feeling the world tilt!) (that's just fun when it happens) -- and so so much about the thrill of sounds in your mouth.

omg:
I'd sworn off triolets [gah! *that's* what these were?!]
for good. I sd I'm done
with that--time to let
it rest the triolet
is meh too small and frayed a net
to catch the wind much less the sun
I swore I'd catch for you in triolets.
There. Good. Done.

What a treat. Picked up at the Brooklyn Heights library new shelf on my very first visit. That birthday feeling.

[emily .ೃ࿐ · Rating 3 out of 5]

i received this book as an advanced readers copy (arc) and am leaving this review voluntarily.

i still haven’t fully arrived to the poetry world but i still wanted to give this a go. turns out, this book wasn’t for me. i liked some of the poems but most of them just weren’t my cup of tea. some poems i read in seconds and some took me longer because i didn’t find the correct flow to read them in. i’d still recommend this book to everyone who wants to give modern poetry a go, though. the book wasn’t bad by any means, it just wasn’t for me, as i said earlier

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, finally. Some modern poetry I can enjoy. Pleasingly minimalist (except the few instances when they’re not) and appealingly melodical, these non-rhymes move like the river.
I liked the language and the description and the rhythm of the poems in this collection. I liked lines like “There’s no end to beauty and sh*t” juxtaposed with some serene beauty of imagery and moods.
All in all, a lovely read. Going to round up the rating. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

[Gabriel Noel · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC given by NetGalley for Honest Review
3.5 stars rounded down

A melodic love letter to the nostalgia and the earth around us. The more "pastoral" style was not for me, though that is a personal preference. I enjoy when McLane get's weird with her metaphor and onomatopoeia, specifically in "Weeds." I loved her personification of plants. Was definitely still an enjoyable read.

My favorite poems are "Self-Reliance", "Trees", and "Weeds."

[Nichole · Rating 2 out of 5]

thank you to the publisher for giving me a copy of this collection to review.

An interesting collection of freeform poetry and poetry with prose that explores nature and our desecration of it.
I liked the moments of sea and salt water, the mentions of tiny violences we inflict on ourselves like microplastics.

Something that didn't work for me was the ableist language like idiot, stupid, etc. as it seemed to not further the message, but take away from it.

[Paul Edlund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spare but not austere. I’m not sure Ive ever read a voice like hers, but I will read more of this author.