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This Blue: Poems
National Book Award Finalist
A vital, exhilarating new collection of poems from the National Book Critics Circle nominee
From lichens to malls to merchant republics, it's "another day in this here cosmos," in Maureen N. McLane's stunning third poetry collection, This Blue. Here are songs for and of a new century, poems both archaic and wholly now. In the middle of life, stationed in our common "Terran Life," the poet conjures urban pigeons, Adirondack mountains, Genoa, Andalucía, Belfast, Parma; here is a world sounded out, broken, possibly shareable, newly "Take it up Old Adam― / everyday the world exists / to be named." This Blue is a searching and a singing―intricate, sexy, smart.
A vital, exhilarating new collection of poems from the National Book Critics Circle nominee
From lichens to malls to merchant republics, it's "another day in this here cosmos," in Maureen N. McLane's stunning third poetry collection, This Blue. Here are songs for and of a new century, poems both archaic and wholly now. In the middle of life, stationed in our common "Terran Life," the poet conjures urban pigeons, Adirondack mountains, Genoa, Andalucía, Belfast, Parma; here is a world sounded out, broken, possibly shareable, newly "Take it up Old Adam― / everyday the world exists / to be named." This Blue is a searching and a singing―intricate, sexy, smart.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2014
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August 9, 2016
Take it up Old Adam -
Everyday the world exists
To be named
We are all continuously seeking out our place in the cosmos, and if we all stepped back and recognized that each person we met was also looking to understand themselves and their place in the world perhaps we would be more kind to one another. 'How can I be in this world?' asks Maureen N. McLane in her collection of poetry This Blue, a collection rife with searching for serenity in a modern world we all share. While much of the poetry seems to tip towards being written from the brain and not the heart, it never feels cold and the evidence of being born from academia is actually quite charming. From looking back at the past for clues and looking about our own existence of a high speed internet world, McLane delivers beautiful investigations and elegies of our human condition.
Moss Lake
I eat this silence
like bread.
The white lake
replaces my head.
I am cold and calm
as the untracked snows.
McLane plays it safe across her newest collection, though in a way this works to her advantage. Shock-value seems strangely to have incorporated itself into a lot of recent poetry and feels ten years too late; who is the target audience as most readers of poetry feel comfortable in an open artistic field, and if something unabashedly open or vulgar or sexual shocks you in the modern world than which rock have you been living under? McLane just wants to create something beautiful, and I respect the hell out of that. There is a calm sereneness to her imagery that combines both the digital age with the natural elements. Mountains and moss are recurring motifs that remind us of the basic elements of existence when we strip away the commercialization and social posturing of our lives, yet still retains a joyful poking at our human ways.
While her metaphors are always fresh and lively, there does seem an effort to pack as many as possible into a poem. Occasionally her work feels like a rock opera with a stack of amps and a full orchestra when all that the audience came for was a solo acoustic show. This Blue tends to write from the intellect and not the heart, which leads to a slight tainted feeling of contrivance instead of poetry like a weightless rose that grew from the concrete, pure and untouchable as a puffy white cloud (mixing metaphors might be a pretentious joke about packing metaphors, or I might just be a tasteless writer). Though many of the elements of academia present in this collection are some of the high points. McLane often toys with rhyme schemes ever so slightly—rhyming poems are something I typically am adverse to, yet here they work—or uses refrains at the end of her stanzas that work in a fantastic lyrical sense. McLane keeps her style fresh and her freshness stylized in a way that is quite charming. One element I enjoyed was the removal of vowels from key words—'said' being written as 'sd', for example—that tie a ribbon of individuality around the collection. Punctuation is also oddly placed, breaking certain lines up strangely or refusing to use punctuation to run two sentences together that read in a humorous non-sequitur fashion. While the style never reaches anything groundbreaking, it seems like the seeds of something that could become brilliant. This is clearly a brilliant mind at work, and though the mind sometimes imposes on the essence of the heart, it still performs quite elegantly.
While there is much to grimace or be underwhelmed by in This Blue, McLane manages to pull off a striking work of serenity that assesses the modern condition as she takes us through 'another day in this here cosmos'. Reaching across all of time, McLane places the human heart on the page in stanza-ed glory while clearly having fun with form. This fun emits from the page into the heart of the reader, and one can't help but feel a little happier for having read them despite a tendency towards obvious contruction and overthinking. This Blue plays it safe, but has a lot of fun doing so.
3.5/5
Broadband
Before I open my mind
to the sludge
the open connection
will carry
let me tarry
with archaic diction
and ancient bodies
the sun & my own
shaped by a code
unfolding itself
through millennia.
For thousands of years
Art had no fashion
was the beautiful
drawing we did.
In cave after cave
Everyday the world exists
To be named
We are all continuously seeking out our place in the cosmos, and if we all stepped back and recognized that each person we met was also looking to understand themselves and their place in the world perhaps we would be more kind to one another. 'How can I be in this world?' asks Maureen N. McLane in her collection of poetry This Blue, a collection rife with searching for serenity in a modern world we all share. While much of the poetry seems to tip towards being written from the brain and not the heart, it never feels cold and the evidence of being born from academia is actually quite charming. From looking back at the past for clues and looking about our own existence of a high speed internet world, McLane delivers beautiful investigations and elegies of our human condition.
Moss Lake
I eat this silence
like bread.
The white lake
replaces my head.
I am cold and calm
as the untracked snows.
McLane plays it safe across her newest collection, though in a way this works to her advantage. Shock-value seems strangely to have incorporated itself into a lot of recent poetry and feels ten years too late; who is the target audience as most readers of poetry feel comfortable in an open artistic field, and if something unabashedly open or vulgar or sexual shocks you in the modern world than which rock have you been living under? McLane just wants to create something beautiful, and I respect the hell out of that. There is a calm sereneness to her imagery that combines both the digital age with the natural elements. Mountains and moss are recurring motifs that remind us of the basic elements of existence when we strip away the commercialization and social posturing of our lives, yet still retains a joyful poking at our human ways.
the mountain'sThat said, McLane uses moss metaphors so often that one wonders if she was out of inspiration or had originally titled this collection This Moss.
promiscuous
any cloud can take him
any sun have him
it's all good
today's assent
and tomorrow's
While her metaphors are always fresh and lively, there does seem an effort to pack as many as possible into a poem. Occasionally her work feels like a rock opera with a stack of amps and a full orchestra when all that the audience came for was a solo acoustic show. This Blue tends to write from the intellect and not the heart, which leads to a slight tainted feeling of contrivance instead of poetry like a weightless rose that grew from the concrete, pure and untouchable as a puffy white cloud (mixing metaphors might be a pretentious joke about packing metaphors, or I might just be a tasteless writer). Though many of the elements of academia present in this collection are some of the high points. McLane often toys with rhyme schemes ever so slightly—rhyming poems are something I typically am adverse to, yet here they work—or uses refrains at the end of her stanzas that work in a fantastic lyrical sense. McLane keeps her style fresh and her freshness stylized in a way that is quite charming. One element I enjoyed was the removal of vowels from key words—'said' being written as 'sd', for example—that tie a ribbon of individuality around the collection. Punctuation is also oddly placed, breaking certain lines up strangely or refusing to use punctuation to run two sentences together that read in a humorous non-sequitur fashion. While the style never reaches anything groundbreaking, it seems like the seeds of something that could become brilliant. This is clearly a brilliant mind at work, and though the mind sometimes imposes on the essence of the heart, it still performs quite elegantly.
While there is much to grimace or be underwhelmed by in This Blue, McLane manages to pull off a striking work of serenity that assesses the modern condition as she takes us through 'another day in this here cosmos'. Reaching across all of time, McLane places the human heart on the page in stanza-ed glory while clearly having fun with form. This fun emits from the page into the heart of the reader, and one can't help but feel a little happier for having read them despite a tendency towards obvious contruction and overthinking. This Blue plays it safe, but has a lot of fun doing so.
3.5/5
Broadband
Before I open my mind
to the sludge
the open connection
will carry
let me tarry
with archaic diction
and ancient bodies
the sun & my own
shaped by a code
unfolding itself
through millennia.
For thousands of years
Art had no fashion
was the beautiful
drawing we did.
In cave after cave
October 22, 2014
I found this collection of classically composed poems by turns beautiful, interesting, and else wise reflective of everyday life and emotions. McLane reflects on people, nature, places, relationships and emotions. There are poems for my up days, poems for the days that I find comfort only in my garden and am overwhelmed by most everything else, and poems for days that I revel in the company and comfort of others. There were no earth-shattering moments in This Blue for me, but there rarely are in my day to day life either; there is just a constant habitual repetition and a lingering grace in my everyday.
December 30, 2014
Maureen McLane's latest poetry book takes the reader on a lyrical odyssey at turns bitingly humorous and at other times in a world wobbling off its axis like a spinning top coming to rest. Sometimes utterly bizarre but for the most part downright entertaining, enlightening and exceptionally transcendent, transformative and transporting. Today, I read parts of this book while sitting on a wooden porch in a cold metal lawn chair in well below freezing weather watching three men reroof an old house a few doors down. Nevertheless, I felt transported by Maureen McLane's prose to warmer yet globally chaotic climes. Her work is that powerful and that good.
January 10, 2015
Everything about this collection of poetry brings thoughts of winter, both cold and warm. Might be helped along by the blue, wintery cover and the fact that I read it in January. Still, it was the perfect time to read it.
Standout poems include: "Envoi" (...will I never not be a child the grave my last crib)
"To One in Parma": (..over there is the real where)
and my favorite one of all "Road/Here Now".
These poems reminded me of poetry which I forget way too often.
Standout poems include: "Envoi" (...will I never not be a child the grave my last crib)
"To One in Parma": (..over there is the real where)
and my favorite one of all "Road/Here Now".
These poems reminded me of poetry which I forget way too often.
September 11, 2014
A new book of poems by McLane that I was looking forward to has
disappointed me greatly. Most of the poems are short lines and
somewhat elliptical and slang is used too often. I could not
get involved in them. There was only poem, Moss Lake, that I
really enjoyed. Nothing remarkable elsewise and I am surprised.
disappointed me greatly. Most of the poems are short lines and
somewhat elliptical and slang is used too often. I could not
get involved in them. There was only poem, Moss Lake, that I
really enjoyed. Nothing remarkable elsewise and I am surprised.
July 24, 2015
McLane's World Enough is one of my most favorite modern poetry collections (Passage I & III get me every time) but I find myself judging all future work against it and nothing has quite made the cut. This Blue is a good collection, needs to be read 2-3 times for a full impact, but none of the poems have imprinted on me as with World.
November 9, 2014
A lovely new collection from McLane; the wit, intelligence, and subtle musicality of these poems makes this a book worth reading slowly, patiently, and more than once.
February 17, 2015
"Quick-witted" is the first word that pops into mind when I think of McLane, and indeed her poems are very witty. The first three sections of this book are a bit more quickly paced, though, than is good for them -- I felt they aspired to the kind of jewel-in-time, wise little constructions that you get from Kay Ryan; but Ryan's poems have a humility and genuine surprise to them that McLane's poems don't achieve because they are too smugly impressed with how smart they are. McLane reminds me a bit of Heather McHugh, another incredibly intelligent and talented poet who too often stumbles over herself trying to out-pun whatever turn of phrase she just got some mileage out of in the very last line. Lucky for us, McLane slows herself down in the final two sections, stretching out and doing some really nice meditative collage pieces about place in the fourth section that reminded me a bit of Marianne Moore (in particular the longest piece in the book, "Terran Life," which is a real tour-de-force.) In the fifth section, all of McLane's academic studies of ballads and songs come into evidence with some really lovely sounding lyrics that feel rooted in a Romantic tradition but very much of a 21st century moment. I love this little piece about commuting on the Acela Express and lying in wait for one's love:
"Quiet Car"
the willow's lost its hair
the snow's receded almost everywhere
and you are riding in the quiet car
the branches mostly bare
but the thin icesheets that cracked and chimed the pond
have vanished into water
while you are riding in the quiet car
walking around the reservoir
canvasbacks gliding on the water
the path two miles, perhaps a bit more
while you are riding in the quiet car
soon I will climb in the old blue car
and drive to Back Bay, not too far
from you my love now riding in the quiet car
**
That's nice. No need to unpack, say, "reservoir" and start spinning out pun after pun. Having said that, I'll collect McLane poems and keep my eye out for her work.
"Quiet Car"
the willow's lost its hair
the snow's receded almost everywhere
and you are riding in the quiet car
the branches mostly bare
but the thin icesheets that cracked and chimed the pond
have vanished into water
while you are riding in the quiet car
walking around the reservoir
canvasbacks gliding on the water
the path two miles, perhaps a bit more
while you are riding in the quiet car
soon I will climb in the old blue car
and drive to Back Bay, not too far
from you my love now riding in the quiet car
**
That's nice. No need to unpack, say, "reservoir" and start spinning out pun after pun. Having said that, I'll collect McLane poems and keep my eye out for her work.
August 12, 2014
What is it with poets and the color blue? Although, indeed, the poems in this book do seem to fall out of it.
One reading is not enough for a book of poems – even if you read them on a summer night with a full moon and all the windows open and the music off and a brown cat asleep at your feet. So this is a first impression – and unquestionably unfair, coming right after the kinetic rush of reading the new City Lights collection of Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems. McLane's poems have a skipping resemblance to O'Hara's – a single strand of thought tangled across twenty lines, laced with wry humor, incidental asides, references to the purely topical: iPods, computer screens… Then, just to shake things up, she pops in the long view, mountains, cave paintings, and the Milky Way.
PS to the publisher (FSG) & the designer Quemadura: nice work!
One reading is not enough for a book of poems – even if you read them on a summer night with a full moon and all the windows open and the music off and a brown cat asleep at your feet. So this is a first impression – and unquestionably unfair, coming right after the kinetic rush of reading the new City Lights collection of Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems. McLane's poems have a skipping resemblance to O'Hara's – a single strand of thought tangled across twenty lines, laced with wry humor, incidental asides, references to the purely topical: iPods, computer screens… Then, just to shake things up, she pops in the long view, mountains, cave paintings, and the Milky Way.
The sky's shiftedAlso, from time to time a playful hummingword line –
and Capricorns abandon
themselves to a Sagittarian
line. I like
this weird axis.
In 23,000 years
it will become again
the same sky
the Babylonians scanned.
Did you see the subtle shift from umber to somber to ochre on the walls of Les Caves de Lascaux?Or a mean metaphor:
You are so opaqueThere's even a New Englander poke at Robert Frost.
to me your brief moments
of apparent transparency
seem fraudulent windows
in a Brutalist structure
everyone admires.
North of BostonOn first reading, this blue book of poems seems too relaxed compared to the critical, antic spirit of My Poets, but I enjoyed the mocking flow of it, the lack of pretension, its sharp perception.
roads diverge.
Downed birches
clog the Nubanusit.
PS to the publisher (FSG) & the designer Quemadura: nice work!
January 30, 2015
I picked this book up because it was shortlisted for this year's National Book Award in Poetry. I should have known better given that Louise Gluck's new book actually WON the award and I thought it was not only her weakest book to date, but that its poems were uninspired and too cerebral.
I can't really say too many positive things about this collection. Most of the poems felt to me like they were ALMOST saying something sublime and new and fresh. But in almost every case, they were marred by either lacking a more incisive metaphor/word choice, or another line to "finish" the poem's soul. I don't mean that they need to be wrapped up with little bows or that things need to be said in black and white. Far from it. It's simply that these poems didn't speak to me of much at all.
I can't really say too many positive things about this collection. Most of the poems felt to me like they were ALMOST saying something sublime and new and fresh. But in almost every case, they were marred by either lacking a more incisive metaphor/word choice, or another line to "finish" the poem's soul. I don't mean that they need to be wrapped up with little bows or that things need to be said in black and white. Far from it. It's simply that these poems didn't speak to me of much at all.
April 29, 2016
I read a bunch of poetry this month, both in books and online, to collect poems for an advent calendar I made. (Sappy sappy.) Anyway, I picked this up because we had it in the library where I worked, and I enjoyed it, but I don't feel I can rate poetry books yet, not until I have some more idea of a comparison. Maureen N. McLane is less traditional than most of what I read, which I like in small doses. She often seems to use language more for its sounds than its meaning, which can be confusing if I try to read too much into it. But that may just be because I was reading this side-by-side Billy Collins, who is nothing if not transparent.
March 26, 2014
I got this book as an ARC at my library.
I read this over a day on and off desk at work. There are definitely a few poems I really like, but by and large I didn't care for most. The style was kind of repetitive, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. But when you're reading poem after poem after poem, you really see the patterns, crutches, and tendences of the author.
That being said, I do still want to read her memoir My Poets.
I read this over a day on and off desk at work. There are definitely a few poems I really like, but by and large I didn't care for most. The style was kind of repetitive, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. But when you're reading poem after poem after poem, you really see the patterns, crutches, and tendences of the author.
That being said, I do still want to read her memoir My Poets.
September 13, 2014
Although I appreciated the compact writing and the efforts of the poet, most of these poems did not really click with me. There were some interesting lines, but rarely did they ever proceed to an interesting poem. Again, as I have mentioned before with reviewing poetry on Goodreads, it may be me who simply did not get what the poet was saying, or did not read the poems with enough concentration and focus.
April 25, 2014
I think her first two books of poems are fantastic. I can't get enough of them; I keep going back and rereading them. This one doesn't seem nearly as rich and textured.
January 24, 2022
OK fern
I'm your apprentice
I can now tell you
apart from your
darker sister ferns
whose intricate ridges
overlay your more
regular triangled fans.
Tell me what to do
with my life.
* * *
Even the places
the sun doesn't reach
in the deepest woods
are hot. Even the places
that never dry - the mosses
creeping everywhere
a damp carpet underfoot -
are dry. Even the quietest
places you've never been
are disquieted by your cry.
Even those places.
* * *
salt lips & a buoyed band
binds the sea in loose chains
to swim in. the beach's
thinned out, the clouds puffing
in, the last ferry's
debarked a last load.
starting out now
seems impossible
but. the rock walls
break the breakers
in. nothing
cannot be disciplined
or freed. scant pines
stagger the apennines
semaphoring
what. quartz-
striped granite
tells a time
that outlives us.
I am older
than the sea
in me.
* * *
embroidered earth
refusing an undesigned mind
uphold me now
it's hard to walk
secure on your pillowed ground
mossed ferned & grassed
this tapestried field
may it yield to an unsteady step
& take only the softest impress
the enfolded brain pressing
against a carapace
millennia ago unfolded
a species and its walk -
a steady upright walk
* * *
I eat this silence
like bread.
The white lake
replaces my head.
I am cold & calm
as the untracked snows.
I'm your apprentice
I can now tell you
apart from your
darker sister ferns
whose intricate ridges
overlay your more
regular triangled fans.
Tell me what to do
with my life.
- OK Fern, pg. 8
* * *
Even the places
the sun doesn't reach
in the deepest woods
are hot. Even the places
that never dry - the mosses
creeping everywhere
a damp carpet underfoot -
are dry. Even the quietest
places you've never been
are disquieted by your cry.
Even those places.
- Even Those, pg. 30
* * *
salt lips & a buoyed band
binds the sea in loose chains
to swim in. the beach's
thinned out, the clouds puffing
in, the last ferry's
debarked a last load.
starting out now
seems impossible
but. the rock walls
break the breakers
in. nothing
cannot be disciplined
or freed. scant pines
stagger the apennines
semaphoring
what. quartz-
striped granite
tells a time
that outlives us.
I am older
than the sea
in me.
- Levanto, pg. 62
* * *
embroidered earth
refusing an undesigned mind
uphold me now
it's hard to walk
secure on your pillowed ground
mossed ferned & grassed
this tapestried field
may it yield to an unsteady step
& take only the softest impress
the enfolded brain pressing
against a carapace
millennia ago unfolded
a species and its walk -
a steady upright walk
- Embroidered Earth, pg. 70
* * *
I eat this silence
like bread.
The white lake
replaces my head.
I am cold & calm
as the untracked snows.
- Moss Lake, pg. 90
June 20, 2019
I'm going to put as much effort into my review as McLane put into her poems. I finished it a few days ago and already forgot about the experience. Luckily I have some notes!
-simplistic; too much enjambment
-weird, random rhymes/rhyme schemes (I vaguely recall a poem in which almost every stanza had a different rhyme scheme).
-a lot of European travel, esp. Italy and Spain (the imagery was lacking and the poems are about as exciting as watching your grandparents showing slides from their vacation).
McLane also has a weird habit of abbreviating "said" as "sd" and "your" as "yr." I have no idea why.
Finally, I noted a few examples of passages that were so obviously trying to be profound but they fell flat:
"I was nostalgic/until I got over it" (p. 78, "Things of August")
"Some violence/is very slow/until it makes itself felt/Makes you feel it." (p.38 "Glacial Erratic")
"I shared a skin/with my skin/I was in/my life not of." (p.24 "Incarnation")
Despite all the negatives, there are a few poems that I really enjoyed. McLane is capable of writing beautiful, sparse, and unique poems about nature.
Poems that I liked:
"Aviary," ""OK Fern," "Enough with the Swan Song."
=3/49 (6.1%) poems that I liked.
-simplistic; too much enjambment
-weird, random rhymes/rhyme schemes (I vaguely recall a poem in which almost every stanza had a different rhyme scheme).
-a lot of European travel, esp. Italy and Spain (the imagery was lacking and the poems are about as exciting as watching your grandparents showing slides from their vacation).
McLane also has a weird habit of abbreviating "said" as "sd" and "your" as "yr." I have no idea why.
Finally, I noted a few examples of passages that were so obviously trying to be profound but they fell flat:
"I was nostalgic/until I got over it" (p. 78, "Things of August")
"Some violence/is very slow/until it makes itself felt/Makes you feel it." (p.38 "Glacial Erratic")
"I shared a skin/with my skin/I was in/my life not of." (p.24 "Incarnation")
Despite all the negatives, there are a few poems that I really enjoyed. McLane is capable of writing beautiful, sparse, and unique poems about nature.
Poems that I liked:
"Aviary," ""OK Fern," "Enough with the Swan Song."
=3/49 (6.1%) poems that I liked.
October 27, 2025
lovely bunch of change and recollection. i love the undercurrent of ambiguous renewal here--things that leave will not be back the same way. "on a sea / of necessity / let's float / wholly / unnecessary / & call / that free"
November 16, 2017
Nice poetry book. A quick read as many of the poems were shorter in length. Lyrical and interesting.
March 13, 2018
4.5 really. Beautiful.
January 8, 2022
gonna be honest. perplexed by the praise
April 26, 2025
A good and enjoyable book of poems. It flowed very nicely and I read it quickly.
January 2, 2026
Four and a half stars
These poems are mostly very good to excellent. The poems get better as the book goes on, or perhaps you 'buy in' to McLane's style.
These poems are mostly very good to excellent. The poems get better as the book goes on, or perhaps you 'buy in' to McLane's style.
September 12, 2015
I hadn’t realized right away, when I decided to buy “This Blue”, that McLane was the same poet who wrote the poems of “World Enough”, which I read earlier this year. Instead I bought it because the summary was what won me over, and my curiosity over the colour blue which I’ve noticed writers and artists enjoy using a lot lately as it has asserted its presence in the literary, artistic, and even cinematographic universes lately. (I also bought this bought for a ridiculously low price of $1 at an indie bookstore downtown which was getting rid of some of its stock and hey, for that kind of a price, I just couldn’t pass it by.)
After finishing I began to wonder if I’ll ever warm up to McLane’s work, if it’s simply an example of something that I’ll only be able to understand with time. I had less connection with the poems of “This Blue” than I did with “World Enough”, as well as less patience. It took me up until section three of the collection to begin warming up to the poems, and only in section four did I finally get into the personality of some individual ones and feel their essence. Much of the writing not only stayed on the page but also came across as surprising and slightly baffling with its structure and stylistic choice of stringing sentences together without punctuation in a way that became choppy and harsh.
Take “Terran Life” as an example. The jacket summary singles it out as an example of McLane’s masterful use of images and references, which is indeed the case on page 65 as the poem opens with words by Wordsworth and progresses into addressing the concept of travel, one that reminded me quite a bit of Rebecca Solnit and “Field Guide to getting Lost”. However the focus and precision of the writing becomes less sharp on the next page and only slightly picks up near the end. This, I found, was the case with many of the poems in this collection. The use of random slang words left me wondering why they were there so awkwardly, and the structure and choppy lines made it easy to lose the flow of the writing and created a barrier when it comes to having an engaging reading experience.
Like some previous reviewers mentioned I too wondered what exactly about “This Blue” made it a finalist for such a prestigious prize, and if perhaps I was missing something glaringly obvious. Some poems I went back and reread after getting through all of them, but even the second and third time around I didn’t pick up anything new, only found myself facing the same problems and questioning the mastery of the collection. Yes, there are memorable lines and clever thoughts. But as a whole they were swallowed up by the void created by the majority of the writing. I’ll put this away on my shelf for a good number of years, don’t know exactly how many yet, and hope that maybe with time I’ll see something I missed during my first encounter with the poems, or find reassurance in the fact that there wasn’t anything amazing nor very special about them that would be worth singling out.
After finishing I began to wonder if I’ll ever warm up to McLane’s work, if it’s simply an example of something that I’ll only be able to understand with time. I had less connection with the poems of “This Blue” than I did with “World Enough”, as well as less patience. It took me up until section three of the collection to begin warming up to the poems, and only in section four did I finally get into the personality of some individual ones and feel their essence. Much of the writing not only stayed on the page but also came across as surprising and slightly baffling with its structure and stylistic choice of stringing sentences together without punctuation in a way that became choppy and harsh.
Take “Terran Life” as an example. The jacket summary singles it out as an example of McLane’s masterful use of images and references, which is indeed the case on page 65 as the poem opens with words by Wordsworth and progresses into addressing the concept of travel, one that reminded me quite a bit of Rebecca Solnit and “Field Guide to getting Lost”. However the focus and precision of the writing becomes less sharp on the next page and only slightly picks up near the end. This, I found, was the case with many of the poems in this collection. The use of random slang words left me wondering why they were there so awkwardly, and the structure and choppy lines made it easy to lose the flow of the writing and created a barrier when it comes to having an engaging reading experience.
Like some previous reviewers mentioned I too wondered what exactly about “This Blue” made it a finalist for such a prestigious prize, and if perhaps I was missing something glaringly obvious. Some poems I went back and reread after getting through all of them, but even the second and third time around I didn’t pick up anything new, only found myself facing the same problems and questioning the mastery of the collection. Yes, there are memorable lines and clever thoughts. But as a whole they were swallowed up by the void created by the majority of the writing. I’ll put this away on my shelf for a good number of years, don’t know exactly how many yet, and hope that maybe with time I’ll see something I missed during my first encounter with the poems, or find reassurance in the fact that there wasn’t anything amazing nor very special about them that would be worth singling out.
July 31, 2015
Let us admit that "Morning With Adirondack Chair" could be the title of almost any Maureen N. McLane poem. The perspective seems always on vacation. Privileged, and having earned its privilege, its leisure, its smarts -- we're not sure how, except by its smarts, perhaps, which unfortunately do not always result in a compelling poem. Elizabeth Bishop could station herself somewhere, and write the poem of thought's action, because the drama of making real what could be made real only through description precise and self-identifying gets more thrilling the further you go into it. Here is McLane in that Adirondack chair: "Clouds a moment's | monument disperse | into an ever whiter sky." Has a bit of song to it, but perceptually it's boilerplate. At times the candid thinker McLane puts me most in mind of is Paul Goodman whose verse formality I like more, but whose intelligence is similarly public-minded. But McLane is torn between her Bishopian method and her Goodmanian subjects. A dramatic subject isn't getting on the page because the obvious intelligence isn't matched/resisted by the formal inquiry. It's easy to feel McLane slums in verse.
November 5, 2014
I don't understand this collection's inclusion of the NBA shortlist. I guess I just didn't get it.
September 30, 2015
Very good, but it's too late at night to do anything but quote: "a rosé's a rosé's a rosé"
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December 4, 2014Eh.
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