Odd Evening

by Eric McHenry

In his first full-length collection in 10 years, Eric McHenry brings fresh attention to his old obsessions - love, laughter, justice, transience, how humility ennobles, how time makes the familiar strange, and how our scars make us beautiful. McHenry can dazzle with his technical dexterity, but his poems aren't merely performances; in Odd Evening, music creates meaning and vice versa. If books of poetry have patron saints, Buster Keaton might be this one' a stoic, stone-faced every person who's endlessly resourceful in the face of calamity.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2016

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Eric McHenry's poems from the very first time I read one. I admire his ability to be wry & kind, sharp & generous, formal & slangy...all at the same time. The poet has an eye for detail and a keenly honed craft. His observations leave me filled with regret, joy, a little homesickness, wonder, and much love for our slightly askew world. Which is, in my opinion, exactly what poetry is meant to do.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his new collection, Odd Evening, Eric McHenry invites readers to “[c]ome take a spacewalk through / the orbit of [his] stuffy head.” In these poems, scenes unfold with clear images, delivered in metered phrases and easy rhyme. Spoken in a voice both wry and poignant, they reveal the world in an uncanny light, as if seen through “sun-puzzled glass.”
Imagine summer cicadas as “new neighbors whose lives are porn, / drone metal and unlicensed flying,” an existence completely understandable for those who are “born /seventeen and dying.” Consider the baseball as “the only egg / horses and men would ever put together,” flying through the air towards the bat, as it “longs to shatter.” Stand with an unresponsive first responder at the scene of an accident. Experience fall leaves through color-blind eyes. Tour a historical neighborhood, once lovely, noting the details of decline.
Odd Evening includes brave, honest poems that turn a critical eye inward on good intentions and white privilege. “Transaction,” “The Pass-Through,” and “Randy Used the Word” are spoken by a narrator who presses his “freckled nose” against the “frosted glass” between himself and people of color, a white man who yearns to go beyond transaction to brotherhood, though he does not always know how. He means to be the sort of man who, after hearing “the word” dropped casually during a haircut, “will walk/out of some barbershops with his hair half-cut” in protest. He falls short at times, and calls himself on it, reminding us all (‘America, and I’m about to talk / directly to the Eric in you’) to reflect on who we mean to be, so that we can rise up when called on.
McHenry’s poems, in their beauty and humor, “retrieve a pang / so imprecise it’s briefly everything.” For a time you’ll see your world from the poet’s keen, wit-slanted point of view—and it might change the way that you see for good.

[Alarie]

Eric McHenry is the Poet Laureate of Kansas. His poems are accessible, entertaining, rather quirky, and all the more enjoyable when you get to hear him read in person. He’s a formalist, which makes his accomplishment even more impressive. He makes verse writing seem so effortless and conversational that you may be finishing a poem before realizing, “Oh, it rhymes.”

My husband purchased the book at a reading last week. I had passed on it because I found the typeface too hard to read: a small, tight sans serif. Since we took it home, I did read the book a few pages at a time.

Often McHenry’s titles are enough to reel you in. How can you resist “New Year’s Letter to All the Friends I’ve Estranged by Not Writing,” “The Last Pay Phone in Topeka,” or “How to Steal the Laptop of Your Childhood Memories”?

Here’s a brief excerpt, part 2. of “The Drift,” that demonstrates McHenry’s ability to take a simple subject and wring meaning from it. He writes of the family swimming pool

“You saw the vinyl walls begin to mottle
and gather like a great-grandmother’s skin,
and realized your loss, by now, was total
whether you kept it up or filled it in,

and so you stood your ground beside the placid
blue oval that believed it was a pond,
broadcasting shock and cyanuric acid
and humming while your hair went slowly blond."

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

i melted

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

All of these poems sound exactly the same.