More Anon: Selected Poems

This strong collection assembles poems from McLane’s first five books, presenting the work of a poet who locates the past in the present and revels in language’s power to transgress limitations. In “Letter from Paris,” McLane playfully deconstructs the Enlightenment: “I am drawing up an indictment/ of the French/ & Reason/ & Human Rights/ which begins by unlinking these concepts/ and concludes in weeping.” McLane delights in collapsing high and low linguistic registers, as in her abecedarian poem “Poem”: “As a man may go to Costco,/ Buy the jumbo pak of diapers, double liters of/ Coke and Diet Coke and a sixpack and stock up on/ Doritos and Cheetos and/ Eveready batteries, so I perhaps/ Formless in the vast republic/ Grasp the metaphysical thing, commodity, crucially desired/ Hologram of national intent.” Yet underlying McLane’s poems is a sense that society’s relationship to the world around it is permeable and fantastically spontaneous: “Every time/ I collide with your mind/ I give off—/ something happens—/ we don’t know what/ Particles, articles/ this bit, a bit/ digital, simple/ fission, fusion/ —a great vowel shift.” This collection shines with a wonderful mix of irreverence and profundity. (July)