We all feel lost at times, and Wesley McNair helps reground us with his newly released book of poems,
The Lost Child, Ozark Poems.
His accolades are many, including being the recipient of
fellowships from the Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Guggenheim Foundations; he was
awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in literature, two
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships for Creative Writers, and a United
States Artists Fellowship.
He has
served four times on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, a testament to
his ability not only to write, but also to judge others' writing.
Oh, and he is the Poet Laureate of
Maine (
1).
Are you convinced he knows what he's doing yet? Well, instead of reading all that he's
earned through his writing (only a small handful of his achievements are listed
here), why not try reading one of his poems. It is not the prizes earned by the artist that you remember,
but the way he makes you feel.
And McNair will certainly make you feel.
Donald Hall calls McNair's art an
experience in "the strangeness of the ordinary."
McNair's language "is our speech
observed-preserved in poetry" (
2).
McNair declares in an interview,
"there is the America of Britney Spears and CNN and the so-called
mainstream culture, and there’s the America of those who live around us in what
we call the margins of our society, though there are far more of them than the
term implies" (
3).
Most of us probably
do not fall into the Britney
Spears bracket, with our own break downs passing by mostly unnoticed, and as much as we may deny it, associate with the
marginal more than we realize.
McNair gives us a reason to turn away, however briefly, from mainstream
culture, for a moment of quiet reflection, with his newly released The Lost Child, Ozark Poems.
Set in the Ozarks of Southern Missouri, a place far from the
world we see represented in the media around us, we find a cast of characters
that seem uncannily familiar: a veteran of six tours of duty who comes
unraveled at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, two newlyweds who pin their dreams
for the future on a long-haul semi, and Ruth, confused in her aging mind -
abducted by aliens. Through it all
runs a theme of reconciliation, providing comfort and humor, forces that
penetrate through the sorrow conveyed by McNair as he copes with the loss of
his mother.
This collection of poetry follows many others, most recently
Lovers of the Lost (2010) and The Ghosts of You and Me (2006), both published by David R. Godine. See our website for more information
and to order: www.godine.com.
