POEMS OF DON MCCORMICK

McCormick’s keenly observed if unsettling debut poetry collection reflects on death and illness.

“Who wants to hear how mellow you feel, / and who wants to write about it?” asks McCormick in a poem entitled “Mellowed Out.” The collection, written over the last three and a half decades, has few moments of levity; the poet, instead, steels himself to face the darker aspects of human existence. The foreboding opening poem, “Great Decisions,” approaches the failings of humankind—particularly those of governments—and underlines a necessity to change or perish: “The air we breathe is turning us gray. / We must decide if we will stay.” “The Ending” has a significantly more intimate tone in its examination of a relationship breakdown: “It’s like I said hello, / and you were dead, / and you never heard what I said.” McCormick’s focus continues in this manner, zooming in to explore personal relationships—an elegy for a friend dying of AIDS or a prose poem in the form of a spiky “Conversation Between Spouses”—before drawing out to address universal questions such as the pursuit of success, midlife crisis, and the absence of God. McCormick’s writing is frank and uncompromising. In the deliciously cynical poem, “Getting Old,” he observes: “You see a new beauty in nature. / You hear peace and quiet. / The reasons are your vision has blurred / and your hearing has failed.” He possesses the rare ability to capture emotions and sensations effortlessly. “Holding On” pinpoints the shifting state of depression: “In the best of times, the cold, broad sword of / boredom lies across my chest and makes me afraid to move.” McCormick’s approach toward race, however, is disconcerting. In the poem “Chinese People,” for example, the narrator says, “I can’t decide whether they have short legs or long bodies.” The poem unsatisfactorily tries to make amends by asking “Imagine if I were looking through their eyes.” Similarly, New York City is declared as the “Brownest damned place I’ve ever seen,” and McCormick suggests that a “Klanner would be freaked-out there. / A dedicated member would have to wear two hoods.”

Weighty, unflinchingly honest writing that sometimes takes an unfortunate discriminatory tone.