Little Ease

by Aaron McCollough

Poetry. McCollough's concerns with ethical living and the ethical treatment of others, especially strangers, permeate this third collection of his work. Named for the 4x4 cell in the Tower of London, LITTLE EASE takes the idea of imprisonment as something that can be elective, as marital fidelity, religious beliefs, and staying true to one's ethical system generally are. "The voice speaking from these poems is always that of a prisoner," McCollough says, "sometimes very happily so." "[McCollough] takes his palette from the social and religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the grip of a 'personal God' began to tighten. Aaron McCollough is a poet of prodigious powers, able to take the full of his poetic inheritance and to make essential poetry at the center of our own ferocious gyre"--Susan Wheeler.

Genres: Poetry

107 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Aaron McCollough's books of poetry include Welkin, Double Venus, Little Ease, No Grave Can Hold My Body Down, Underlight, Rank, and Salms. He was raised in Tennessee. He holds a PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan as well as an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Reviews

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book this morning. It was cold and I loved hearing myself reading it to myself which is a little engine I created, which fits with the writing and the idea of stricture. I loved how far apart, how long, how missing. I loved the rigid little bridge of epigraphs. I loved the sections and I know it's silly to feel asleep in the language, so maybe taken care of or rocked or just blown on, and because I'm sick today and all my thoughts feel taken out of me and laid like eels on the bedstand -- I'm giving Little Ease one thousand stars. That's right. Every single one.