Mercury Dressing: Poems

by J.D. McClatchy

Since the publication of Hazmat , a book about the life of the body—short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize—J. D. McClatchy’s poetry has increasingly taken up the life of the soul. Now in verse as quicksilver as it is authoritative, he returns to themes he has touched on before, but from a new or unusual perspective—focusing on the frame rather than the picture, the tear rather than the sorrow.

The title poem captures the nervous energy and aloneness surrounding the figure of Mercury, while the stunning long poem “Sorrow in 1944” tells the tale of the grown child of Madame Butterfly. McClatchy’s impulse is to tell the story after the story, the minor opera in the shadows of a great one that nonetheless tells its own tale of the heart, bearing its own measure of tragedy and hope.

With its emotional range, maturity, and formal elegance, Mercury Dressing is the finest work to date from one of our most significant poets.

Mercury Dressing
To steal a glance and, anxious, see
Him slipping into transparency—
The feathered helmet already in place,
Its shadow fallen across his face
(His hooded sex its counterpart)—
Unsteadies the routines of the heart.
If I reach out and touch his wing,
What harm, what help might he then bring?
But suddenly he disappears,
As so much else has down the years . . .
Until I feel him deep inside
The emptiness, preoccupied.
His nerve electrifies the air.
His message is his being there.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Hardcover

First published February 10, 2009

About the author

McClatchy is an adjunct professor at Yale University and editor of the Yale Review. He also edits the "Voice of the Poet" series for Random House AudioBooks.

His book Hazmat (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) was nominated for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. He has written texts for musical settings, including eight opera libretti, for such composers as Elliot Goldenthal, Daron Hagen, Lowell Liebermann, Lorin Maazel, Tobias Picker, Ned Rorem, Bruce Saylor, and William Schuman. His honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1991). He has also been one of the New York Public Literary Lions, and received the 2000 Connecticut Governor’s Arts Award.

In 1999, he was elected into the membership of The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in January 2009 he was elected president. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (1987), the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets (1991). He served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1996 until 2003. (Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Diann Blakely]

J.D. McClatchy, the longtime editor of the YALE REVIEW, the recently appointed president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the perspicuous intellect behind Anthony Hecht's SELECTED POEMS (Knopf) playfully--or poisonously--titled his last collection MERCURY DRESSING. Quintessential McClatchy, the poems balance mandarin wit with enormous learning, a fully 21st-century sensibility and a deft use of the demotic: “At the second intermission of Manon / We were bored and on a third vodka. . . .”

http://www.randomhouse.com/book/11062...

[Sean]

Dog-eared:
"The Frame"
"Mercury Descending"

[Shannon]

This book isn't out yet but when it is I will eagerly read it because McClatchy is Chip Kidd's partner and Chip Kidd is aweeesome. I feel like a stalker...