Some Say

The imagistic touchstones of McLane's fifth collection (after MzN: the serial)—the sun, night skies, trees—may be familiar poetic staples, but the poet is keen to "unknow" them, to see nature anew and follow wherever the reperception leads: "Let's go to Dawn School/ and learn again to begin." Set down in spare, flowing strands unhampered by punctuation, these poems achieve a surprising complexity, like unraveled Möbius strips of logic and epiphany: "The multiverse contracts/ to a single implacable place/ where nothing you can imagine/ will never not take place." While mindful experience of the physical world is a prerequisite for metaphysical knowledge ("A long walk/ required to know/ the ground"), divine presence, here considered a form of nostalgia, is not ("sweet to think/ it's all designed"). McLane's knack for encapsulating discovery and loss in so few words ("It is never not time/ to say hello/ or goodbye") is all too rare, not least because of the knowing humor and delicacy ("The fall/ suspends itself in the trees") that run through them.