cover image Stealing Glimpses: Of Poetry, Poets, and Things in Between / Essays

Stealing Glimpses: Of Poetry, Poets, and Things in Between / Essays

Molly McQuade. Sarabande Books, $14.95 (224pp) ISBN 978-1-889330-26-6

The title doesn't promise more than a miscellany, but the reviews and journalistic exercises collected here give a pretty cohesive picture of a book reviewer and journalist at work. Po-biz veteran McQuade, a former editor at PW, aims to be ""serious, yet light on my feet--virtuous, like a verb that spins away,"" and seems as at home profiling the late gentle giber William Matthews as examining ""The Cost of Poetry"" in dollars and cents with industry people. A third of these 27 pieces have appeared in places like PW and Hungry Mind Review, but even the more first-person essays--such as ""Bookless,"" recounting McQuade's decision to put her library in storage--have the length and heft of newspaper or short magazine pieces. Squibs on the Pilobolus Dance Theatre, Georgia O'Keeffe and novelist Lorrie Moore indicate McQuade's range of interests. Discussions of and with Galway Kinnell, Little Review co-founder Margaret Anderson, Adrienne Rich, the still under-recognized Barbara Guest, Ashbery, Bishop and a host of others leave us with a thoughtful portrait of ""the professional business I've continued to conduct with books."" (Apr.)