How to have a day

by Megan McShea

McShea explores the influence of time on daily consciousness in the heightened awareness of these poems. Crafted in the morning hours, existence is unmasked in the pages of this hand-bound book. How to have a day, with it's letterpress printed cover and full-color illustrations by Jackie Milad, is graceful in content and physical effect. While the book fits in the palm of one's hand, it is considerably larger than it's size suggests. How to have a day asks the reader to consider the depth of beautiful material, to remember each self in a world of lots.

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Unknown Binding

First published May 22, 2015

Reviews

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short pieces filled with pearls of wisdom and whimsy, absurdist instructions for living, sentences where the unexpected lurks around the next clause. This short book is a great addendum to Megan McShea's full length "A Mountain of Toad Splendor." Some thoughts to meet you wherever you are in your week:

"Desire, like dread, is decoration. It hangs there or hides there, in pockets and sleeves. It primes the day when a soul begins to wish."
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"Imagine soaking in a perfect axiom for your ailing heart. Imagine a cushioned alley for laying your thoughts to rest, a vault for putting all claims upon you in a deep freeze, inert. Now, have a day."

[Rupert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Megan McShea's writing just gets better and better. Step into a snowglobe of word fever and swirling pixie dust that only hard work and a hungry consciousness could create. Escape the brutal aspects of the world for a while and return to it understanding it better with life affirming joy in your heart.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This chapbook is a diminutive but no less fantastic follow-up to McShea's 2013 collection A Mountain City of Toad Splendor. McShea's prose poems are dense and difficult to parse, yet so elegantly constructed. It's easy to marvel at the way she chooses and fits words together, but more difficult to tease out the meaning of the lines. But then a poem appears seemingly out of nowhere that feels much clearer than previous ones and it takes the breath away. It's almost as if she is making you work for your reward. With this collection, rereading lines is often mandatory, and the urge to reread is constantly energized by the sudden flashes that touch a chord inside.