From the Bookshelf: Campbell McGrath “American Noise”
I pulled this old favorite from my shelf tonight and read over it again, remembering why it is an old favorite. Never heard of Campbell McGrath? He’s a MacArthur “Genius” as well as a Guggenheim fellow, a pushcart winner, Kingsley Tufts Award Winner among other prestigious awards he can claim as his own. Still unsure?This comparison may not be entirely accurate, it being after two and the eyelid lead is no longer being withheld my active muscles, making me look like I’m trying to see something far off, but I’d say Campbell McGrath is poetry’s Douglas Coupland. He has the cynical, sarcastic distaste for corporations and vast vocabulary of the young intellectuals in the ’80s. Equal parts Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and the Who (or Guns ‘n Roses perhaps). American Noise is McGrath’s second collection, after “Capitalism” which is long out of print, sadly. AN is probably one of my favorites. Favorite books period. There is such a vast, overwhelmingly American feel to his poetry, even when not describing things in America. He’s been a sailor, carpenter and alligator wrestler, but now settles with wrestling words in Miami, where he teaches at Florida International University’s MFA program. I had the good fortune of having been taught his poem Angels and the Bars of Manhattan in an early poetry class, and can’t help but think that I too will be teaching a poem from this collection when I’m teaching intro to creative writing to Freshmen. Right now I’m gravitating towards the wonderful Smokestacks, Chicago Here’s just the opening few lines, and you’ll understand:
“To burn, to smolder with the jeweled incendiary coal
of wanting, to move and never
stop, to seize, to use,
to shape, grasp, glut, these united
states of transition, that’s
it, that is it,
our greatness, right
there.”
The urgency of the poem, the mad-listing, and that “jeweled incendiary coal of wanting” how could you not love it. It’s also one of his much shorter poems (in line length, and only 2 pages, below the mean poem length of 3 pages for this journal) so it should, I figure, be easier to teach kids with shorter attention spans than my own. I should quote again, to give you another little taste for the book. Here’s from a poem directly linking him to the Beats- Blue Tulips and Night Train for Jack Kerouac’s Grave (y’all ridin the train? Woo woo!)
“This morning I see you slouched beneath the streetlight
on the corner, passing a bottle of tokay with the winos
from the last welfare dives on Belmont–the Julian,
the Bel-Ray, the Diplomat Hotel–a semaphore of cigarettes
and anachronistic neon, Transients Welcome
on the blink in rubific pink italic script.
October. Drizzle of elm trees and solemn flags.
Memories of the railroad earth kicked up on the wind
that squeegees fallen leaves along the back alleys
rich with the cast off declensions of our lives”
Pretty sweet, right? But did you see rubific? Declensions? Hopefully you don’t mind the out of the ordinary vocabulary words coming at you, because he digs deep into his pouch of words, and often. His poems are about celebration in the everyday, in roadside signs in the 7-11 burrito, “For his is the land of Salisbury steak and crinkle-cut fries,” for his are poems in which the questions and issues all of humanity deals with are dealt with: loneliness, alienation, mortality, but also camaraderie; celebration in a pint and a shot, a sunset in Brewster County, Texas, driving at night. At times life-threateningly urgent, at others meditative. Just, check it out already. Here’s a link for you lazy readers who might not buy the book if I don’t make it overwhelmingly easy for you. There are 3 copies under $6 right now, and another 3 under $7. I’ll leave you with one last quotation from Night Travelers:
“Rising from Newark I see the cars of the homebound commuters assembled
like migrating caravans.
Lush as glowworms, gregarious as electric eels in their dusty blue Hondas
and plush Monte Carlos,
they jam the tollways and access roads, flood the exits and passing lanes,
circle the sinuous cloverleaves
until they are nothing but rivers of dun and aluminum and butter-colored light”