Seven Notebooks : Poems

An ant to the stars
or stars to the ant--which is
more irrelevant?

Weekend Jet Skiers--
rude to call them idiots,
yes, but facts are facts.

Clamor of seabirds
as the sun falls--I look up
and ten years have passed.
--from Dawn Notebook

Such is the expansive terrain of Seven Notebooks: the world as it is seen, known, imagined, and dreamed; our lives as they are felt, thought, desired, and lived. Written in forms that range from haiku to prose, and in a voice that veers from incanta-tory to deadpan, these seven poetic sequences offer diverse reflections on language and poetry, time and consciousness, civilization and art--to say nothing of bureaucrats, surfboards, and blue margaritas. Taken collectively, Seven Notebooks composes a season-by-season account of a year in the life of its narrator, from spring in Chicago to summer at the Jersey Shore to winter in Miami Beach. Not a novel in verse, not a poetic journal, but a lyric chronicle, this utterly unique book reclaims territory long abandoned by American poetry, a characteristic ambition of Campbell McGrath, one of the most honored, accessible, and humanistically engaged writers of our time.