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Original Essays | May 1, 2013
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More copies of this ISBNThis title in other editionsWorld Enough: Poemsby Maureen N Mclane
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:In World Enough, Maureen N. McLane maps a universe of feeling and thought via skyscapes, city strolls, lunar vistas, and passages through environments given and built. These poems explore how we come to know ourselves—sensually, intellectually, politically, biologically, historically, and anthropologically. Moving from the most delicate address to the broadest salutation, World Enough takes us from New England to New York to France to the moon. McLane fuses song and critique, giving us poetry as “musical thought,” in Carlyles phrase. Shuttling between idyll and disaster, between old forms and open experiment, these are restless, probing, exacting poems that aim to take the measure of—and to give a measure for—where we are. McLane moves through many forms and creates her own, invoking the French Revolution alongside convolutions of the heart and revolutions of the moon. Shifting effortlessly between the species and the self, between the sentient surround and the peculiar pulse within, World Enough attests to experience both singular and shared: “not that I was alive / but that we were.” Maureen N. McLanes essays have appeared in numerous publications. She is the author of Same Life. She received the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing. She teaches at New York University. In World Enough, Maureen N. McLane maps a universe of feeling and thought via skyscapes, city strolls, lunar vistas, and passages through environments given and built. These poems explore how we come to know ourselves—sensually, intellectually, politically, biologically, historically, and anthropologically. Moving from the most delicate address to the broadest salutation, World Enough takes us from New England to New York to France to the moon. McLane fuses song and critique, giving us poetry as “musical thought,” in Carlyles phrase. Shuttling between idyll and disaster, between old forms and open experiment, these are restless, probing, exacting poems that aim to take the measure of—and to give a measure for—where we are. McLane moves through many forms and creates her own, invoking the French Revolution alongside convolutions of the heart and revolutions of the moon. Shifting effortlessly between the species and the self, between the sentient surround and the peculiar pulse within, World Enough attests to experience both singular and shared: “not that I was alive / but that we were.” "McLane is a professor of English at NYU, a prolific book critic and specialist in British romanticism. Her academic proclivities are readily apparent in her second collection: 'what is called thinking/ is obsessing,' she writes, echoing and answering the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. This book has the overall feel of a poetic diary, with meditations on the changing seasons, travel, politics, love affairs, and the mind itself, as McLane (Same Life) ventures to understand, via various methods, what it means to live in a particular epoch: The question/ is the ratio of the palpable hurt/ to the general session/ of life in an era. There, and elsewhere, McLane crosses the streams of academic and accessibly passionate language, creating a kind of emotional, autobiographical criticism in hip free verse: 'rain rain and the trees/ engulfed I am tired/ of reading Russians their suffering/ souls their tribulations.' McLane, armed with a sharp wit, engages in an ambitious poetic project, as she confronts the very meaning of the shadowed hours of time past, present, and future."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) "With a title evoking Marvell, McLane's second collection adheres to his dictum that 'though we cannot make our sun/ Stand still, yet we will make him run,' even as her poems drift and spill down these pages like rain. Often employing syllabic minimums (especially in the longer poems), McLane uses simple diction that butts up against the philosophical and profound. Generic words like 'cloud(s)/ rain/ wind/ sun' are reiterated to form a shifting web that explores the 'weathers' and the 'whethers'; beginning in a locus, the poems gaze outward toward the whatevers of space-time, trying to split (sometimes violently) the poem-moments apart like atoms of experience. McLane, who's noted for her literary criticism and scholarship, also demonstrates an ease with Blakean lyric. With disarming playfulness, even whimsy, she interrogates what self is and what language means in a physically, spiritually, and materially 'stormbashed' world where 'Nothing/ in nature that is ours/ is ours' . . . Though playful, these poems are not for literary wimps. Occasionally, what begins so engagingly starts to feel like sound bite or the image-flash of commercial TV, something McLane herself seems aware of, but at their best these poems fuse musicality and wordplay into ingenious thought; highly recommended"—Library Journal Praise for Same Life "A dazzling poetry collection."—Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune "Same Life is such a tour de force that ti's hard to believe it's Maureen N. McLane's first collection . . . It takes a combination of hubris and humility to write variations on Sappho, and McLane has both in 'After Sappho,' a series of poems that is equal parts translation, adulation and transformation . . . McLane's got a razor-sharp and snarky sense of humor, too, and a deft hand at love poems."—Kel Munger, Sacramento News and Review "Do not read this book if you do not want to feel anything. Whether you've had one love or many or no, you will identify with some part of this experience. If you are a poet, you will identify with the impossibility and necessity of putting it on the page."—Kascha Semonovitch, The Kenyon Review "Reading Maureen N. McLane's Same Lifeis like discovering François Truffaut's first films: this is an exhilarating, brilliant poet . . . [and] a thrilling first book."—Frank Bidart "The dance of the mind, and the language adorning it, is intricate, bold, and precisely enacted through every line of Maureen N. McLane's Same Life. A thoroughly exhilarating, and significant, debut."—August Kleinzahler Review:"McLane is a professor of English at NYU, a prolific book critic and specialist in British romanticism. Her academic proclivities are readily apparent in her second collection: 'what is called thinking/ is obsessing' she writes, echoing and answering the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. This book has the overall feel of a poetic diary, with meditations on the changing seasons, travel, politics, love affairs, and the mind itself, as McLane (Same Life) ventures to understand, via various methods, what it means to live in a particular epoch: 'The question/ is the ratio of the palpable hurt/ to the general session/ of life in an era.' There, and elsewhere, McLane crosses the streams of academic and accessibly passionate language, creating a kind of emotional, autobiographical criticism in hip free verse: 'rain rain and the trees/ engulfed I am tired/ of reading Russians their suffering/ souls their tribulations.' McLane, armed with a sharp wit, engages in an ambitious poetic project, as she confronts the very meaning of 'the shadowed hours' of time past, present, and future. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Synopsis:In World Enough, Maureen N. McLane maps a universe of feeling and thought via skyscapes, city strolls, lunar vistas, and passages through environments given and built. These poems explore how we come to know ourselves—sensually, intellectually, politically, biologically, historically, and anthropologically. Moving from the most delicate address to the broadest salutation, World Enough takes us from New England to New York to France to the moon. McLane fuses song and critique, giving us poetry as “musical thought,” in Carlyles phrase. Shuttling between idyll and disaster, between old forms and open experiment, these are restless, probing, exacting poems that aim to take the measure of—and to give a measure for—where we are. McLane moves through many forms and creates her own, invoking the French Revolution alongside convolutions of the heart and revolutions of the moon. Shifting effortlessly between the species and the self, between the sentient surround and the peculiar pulse within, World Enough attests to experience both singular and shared: “not that I was alive / but that we were.” About the AuthorMaureen N. McLanes essays have appeared in numerous publications. She is the author of Same Life (FSG, 2008). She received the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing. She teaches at New York University. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
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