Consolationeer

In Consolationeer, lines soar beyond their bounds, turning sense into vector and idea to a winged thing. The end of the world comes just before daylight and love is simultaneously particular and apocalyptic, falling down in ashes around us. This is the crisis at its best. Consolationeer is Marc at his flyest.

-Amelia Gray, author of Threats and Gutshot

Marc McKee’s superb third collection Consolationeer is a reminder of why he is one of the most thoughtful and wide-ranging poets putting in work out here. In these intricate poems, McKee holds onto the linguistic wit and musical pleasures of his previous collections, but has learned some other things along the way-about urgency and love, about inevitability and what it means to be on the cusp of permanence. “Nothing happens. / Which is to say an awful lot very nearly / happens” the speaker of “Lately Indesolate” tells us. These poems are full of happenings and almost happenings that show us that we are fortunate and full of luxury to be here right now, living in our slim spaces between necessity and beauty.

-Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke

Nobody writes like Marc McKee. His voice is his own, as is his complexly word-deliberate, irrepressibly inventive manner. The result in Consolationeer is a concurrently heartbreaking and delightful tour de force. At the heart of this work is a deep passion, an exhilarating intelligence, and-beyond even these uncommon pleasures-an unshakeable compassion. He is our most wise young poet.

-Scott Cairns, author of Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems