THIS BLUE

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014

National Book Award Finalist
Editor’s Choice, New York Times Sunday Book Review

A vital, exhilarating new collection of poems from the National Book Critics Circle nominee

From lichens to malls to merchant republics, it's "another day in this here cosmos," in Maureen N. McLane's stunning third poetry collection, This Blue. Here are songs for and of a new century, poems both archaic and wholly now. In the middle of life, stationed in our common "Terran Life," the poet conjures urban pigeons, Adirondack mountains, Genoa, Andalucía, Belfast, Parma; here is a world sounded out, broken, possibly shareable, newly named: "Take it up Old Adam— / everyday the world exists / to be named." This Blue is a searching and a singing—intricate, sexy, smart.

Praise

“These are poems that keep you on your toes . . . McLane renders each phrase with the precise and steady hand of an ice sculptor. Her consummate finesse can be a source of delight.” —Jeff Gordinier, The New York Times Book Review

“*Starred Review* The 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 . . . An exciting collection that celebrates the extraordinary in the ordinary.” —Doris Lynch, Library Journal

“Beginning with "a chair,/ a table, grass," and ending in the "wild way" of the woods, McLane's latest poetry collection is a progressive push into the unknown. Her consistency of voice, an amalgam of neoformal rhyme and contemporary bravado, serves as an anchor throughout the book's five sections, each of which explores a new setting and subject pairing.” —Publishers Weekly