Synopses & Reviews
Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. African American Studies. In Shane McCrae's NONFICTION, the self is repeatedly re-figured as the site of rupture between truth and fiction, present and past, first- person and third-person—the rupture in which the dichotomies we live by, the dichotomies that erase us, originate. The speakers of these poems inhabit impossible situations, and the poems themselves speak neither of overcoming, nor of being overcome by, these impossibilities, but of the moment of equilibrium between extremes, the moment of uncertainty from which the future emerges. As McCrae writes at the end of his two-part poem on Solomon Northup, "in the darkness / I after a while couldn't be sure / My eyes were open." These poems assert, and foreground, possibility; the rupture they describe is hope.
Synopsis
The poems in Nonfiction are simultaneously poems and essays, formal and free, fiction and nonfiction, and all are music.
Synopsis
In Shane McCrae's NONFICTION, the self is repeatedly re-figured as the site of rupture between truth and fiction, present and past, first-person and third-person-the rupture in which the dichotomies we live by, the dichotomies that erase us, originate. The speakers of these poems inhabit impossible situations, and the poems themselves speak neither of overcoming, nor of being overcome by, these impossibilities, but of the moment of equilibrium between extremes, the moment of uncertainty from which the future emerges. As McCrae writes at the end of his two-part poem on Solomon Northup, "in the darkness / I after a while couldn't be sure / My eyes were open." These poems assert, and foreground, possibility; the rupture they describe is hope.
Synopsis
"Nonfiction is a welcome offering from one of the most stunningly original poets to emerge in the last few years. Using a hauntingly lyrical syntax that embraces stammerings and fragmentations, Shane McCrae gives us poems based on documentary accounts of slavery and imprisonment, as well as more intimate treatments of troubling subjects. Whatever their sources, the poems are 'nonfiction' in the most urgent sense, bringing to light some of our culture's most deeply disturbing truths."Martha Collins
About the Author
Shane McCrae is the author of NONFICTION (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), BLOOD (Noemi Press, 2013), and MULE (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2010), and the chapbooks IN CANAAN (Rescue Press, 2011) and One Neither One (Octopus Books, 2009). His work has appeared in Fence, Gulf Coast, jubilat, African American Review, Agni, The American Poetry Review, DENVER QUARTERLY, Effing Magazine, Typo, and The Best American Poetry 2010. He holds degrees from Linfield College, the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Harvard Law School, and the University of Iowa. He is the recipient of a 2011 Whiting Writers' Award and a 2013 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship.