Since his much-praised Spring Comes to Chicago
(1996), McGrath's readers have known what to expect: his long lines and catalogues mingle American treasures and American detritus, social critiques and topical jokes, to give his odes and verse-essays a sometimes lighthearted, consciously Whitmanesque flair. McGrath won a MacArthur grant on the strength of that style (continued in 2002's Florida Poems
), and this sixth book continues in the same vein: the opening poem considers "the gigawatt voice/ of the culture—popular culture, mass culture, our culture—kaboom!" McGrath indeed tries to acknowledge, even to praise, as much of that culture as he can—he offers a "song of the RV and the barbed-wire school bus farm," "a paradoxical, Froot Loopian/ awakening to the mechanisms of the marketplace," even an epigram on fast food ("the sandwiches at Subway/ suck"). Many poems focus on McGrath's post-Baby Boom upbringing, and on his generation's popular (and obscure) songs; a final segment travels to Ireland and Spain. His signature form, the abecedarian catalogue (in which line one starts with A, line two with B, and so on) rewards expansion rather than compression and reconsideration, and thus can feel more sprawlingly horizontal than deep. And if this volume represents little advance, it certainly confirms McGrath's success in his ambitious, and accessible, mode. (Dec.)
