An ant to the stars or stars to the antβwhich is more irrelevant?
Weekend Jet Skiersβ rude to call them idiots, yes, but facts are facts.
Clamor of seabirds as the sun fallsβI look up and ten years have passed." βfrom "Dawn Notebook"
Such is the expansive terrain of Seven Notebooks: 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 incantaΒtory to deadpan, these seven poetic sequences offer diverse reflections on language and poetry, time and consciousness, civilization and artβto say nothing of bureaucrats, surfboards, and blue margaritas. Taken collectively, Seven Notebooks 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.
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