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"The poems of Anthony McCann are beautiful, brutal, and unerring. They present us with, or return us to, a complicated, violent, poignant, weird, and mysterious world—a world which is very particularly his, and also our own, re-sung. For some time now I have believed McCann to be one of the finest poets writing today, and as I Heart Your Fate makes clear, he is only getting better."—Maggie Nelson, author of Bluets and The Art of Cruelty
In his third collection of poetry, Anthony McCann fuses the worlds of dream, art, love, and brute humanity, taking the redemptive power of the romantic to new and surprising extremes. "I don't have a body to feel afraid," writes McCann, and these poems, bald and imaginative, almost convince the reader it must be so, save for the fact that they are so vitally, essentially human.
From "Of the Mockingbird":
So that once again, beloved readers,
I find that I have died. I die
each time inside my body
each time I eat your food—
O World
(By which I always mean THE LIGHT)
Or let's just say
there's a forehead
between my body and the light
and it deactivates the World
Anthony McCann was born and raised in the Hudson Valley. His previous books include Moongarden and Father of Noise. He lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts and works with Machine Project.
"Throughout this playful, heartfelt and enriching collection, McCann demonstrates that the truth surrounds us all; our best way of connecting with it is through compassion and love." —Nate Pritts, Boston Review
"To find yourself in the middle of an Anthony McCann poem is to be surrounded by a rich, descriptive elegance...What appears simple becomes infinitely dynamic and fractured." —Nick Sturm, H_ngm_n
"Though at times what’s seen is threatening or ominous, these poems are ultimately celebratory, and the world is one in which “it’s nice to be held while watching the waves.” —Jennifer Moore, Another Chicago Magazine
Post Futurism
Omoa (Time of the Grackle)
Of the Mockingbird
Field Work
The Assistant
Draga Barbara,
Putin with Lynch
Poem
Letters of Claire and Trelawny
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Dear Catholic Church,
The Event
2 I ♥ Your Fate
I came out of the past, with fingers all stained
Here’s something as thoughtful as chairs in the snow:
A man on blue shoulders drifts through white lights
Can organized body hair still be alive?
You came in from the street riding your thoughts
Music came back and made us its slave
Werther
We captured their leader and cut off his head
Deseret
I had to go back and touch the stove twice
The surface is quiet; I'm suffering joy
In this forest milieu: an encounter with void
The clouds drifted over a late human lunch
It’s strange to be seen, I’ve said to a tree
3 New Dreams of Mammal Island
Your Voice
Dreams of Waking
Alibi
Letter Never Sent
In the Visitors’ Locker Room
Mammal Island
Invincibility
More Dreams of Waking
In the American Grain