This Blue

This third poetry collection from McLane (Same Life; World Enough) is replete with searching poems—"how can I be in this world?"—and poems celebrating nature and travel. McLane possesses an eye for the specific details of a place—"scant pines/ stagger the apennines/ semaphoring"—and can dig deeper to capture both its beauty and its political history: "the snowdrops ungeared for fighting/ yet strive they do to live in this suddenly/ coldened place." McLane's style is usually very spare: "a young mother/ & a posse of teens/ newly gelato'd pass by." She often composes in tercets or quatrains, and unlike many modern poets she occasionally incorporates rhyme, though not always to good effect: "It's good not to be dead/ —a thing one wouldn't have said." Humor is a plus in many of her titles: "Morning Vanitas," "They Were Not Kidding in the Fourteenth Century," and "Enough with the Swan Song." The longest poem at five pages, "Terran Life" has many good sections, but the best poems reveal a sense of play while at the same time making every word count: "So there/ said the spring. So what/ the jay shrieked."