Seven Notebooks

<p> An ant to the stars<br> or stars to the ant—which is<br> more irrelevant? </p> <p> Weekend Jet Skiers—<br> rude to call them idiots,<br> yes, but facts are facts. </p> <p> Clamor of seabirds<br> as the sun falls—I look up<br> and ten years have passed."<br> —from "Dawn Notebook" </p> <p> Such is the expansive terrain of <i>Seven Notebooks</i>: 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 incanta­tory 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, <i>Seven Notebooks</i> 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. </p>