Wesley McNairReseñas

Wesley McNair is a New England poet, a New Hampshire resident until he took a professorship at the University of Maine at Farmington forty years ago (they live in Mercer, ME roughly halfway between Bangor and the NH line, going east to west) He has written roughly twenty books and has been nominated and awarded much over the last 40 years.
Late Wonders: New and Selected Poems begins with a very nice "retrospection" written by McNair, and the volume ends with a section of his new poems. Between the two are selections from his collections, including "McNair’s masterful trilogy of three long narrative poems written over the course of thirty years." (these have been published in separate volumes.

I like McNair’s poetry for many reasons. It’s down-to-earth, intimate, ordinary, sometimes funny or sentimental, always empathetic. He’s captured so much of northern New England, and yet we easily find in his lines the universal.

OLD CADILLACS

Who would have guessed they would end this way,
rubbing shoulders with old Scouts and pickups
at the laundromat, smoothing out frost heaves

all the way home? Once cherished for their style,
they are now valued for use, their back seats
full of kids, dogs steaming their windows; yet this

is the life they have wanted all along, to let go
of their flawless paint jobs and carry cargoes
of laundry and cheap groceries down no-name roads,

wearing bumper stickers that promise Christ
until they can travel no more and take their places
in backyards. far from the heated garages

of the rich who rejected them, among old trees
and appliances and chicken wire, where the poor
keep each one, dreaming, perhaps, of a Cadillac

with parts so perfect it might lift past sixty
as if not touching the earth at all, as if to pass
through the eye of a needle and roll into heaven.

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You can read more of McNair's work here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wesley-mcnair

In McNair’s latest, he offers us a narrative poem that tells the intimate story of his often troubled and struggling sister Aimee, living in Virginia with a difficult husband; but also reaches further into his family in New England, the inner dynamics and history, before bringing us into the present. I wasn’t sure I’d like this long, narrative poem; a poem that seems to inhabit some nuanced interstitial space between what we commonly think of as poetry and a longer prose piece of personal content. Not my usual thing, but I like McNair’s other stuff, and once I stepped into it and let it’s current move me forward, I was hooked.

This is McNair’s attempt to understand his clearly much-loved but troubled sister and her Trump-loving husband. The sister seems lost much of the time, searching for something she lost or never had, and we see the roots of her need in early family dynamics and history. We learn about her husband, a Polish immigrant as a child (or perhaps born here; it’s not entirely clear) and Navy veteran. McNair moves back and forth in time effortlessly and the loose rhythm draws us along. For me, I found the intimacy of his search for understanding and the pervading compassion in it, well, both moving and addictive. In the end the poet and the poem offers us hope; hope which we badly need in these trying times.½

I’ve had a harder time settling into books since the pandemic. I’ve abandoned as many books as I’ve read. I’m not sure if there is specific kind of book I need these days or what, but this volume of poetry was with several others and a fair number of novels, crammed spine up in an old wooden doll’s cradle my great grandfather made for my Nana around 1893 or so—which looking back somehow seems appropriate—and the volume was just what I needed.

These poems are mostly about grief and loss, some personal, some not, but also their is alook back with the perspective that comes of age. McNair is considered a “poet of place,” in this case, Northern New England, so he often writes about things and uses motifs, I’m familiar with, although his poetry speaks beyond territorial boundaries. The poetry I found most appealing in this volume (this go around; is a volume of poetry ever “finished”?) were those that moved away from grief and offers insights and affirmation. Here, I offer two favorites….

Praise Song

There was no stopping the old pear tree
in our back yard. After we released it
from a staked cord, it stood on the lawn
for a month as if coming to its decision
to lie back down on the ground again.
All winter we left it for dead, but in the spring
it law in an island of unmowed grass
blooming beside its mate, and this May,
when I separate their branches
and look in, I find new shoots and flowers.

At the end of my life I want to lie down
in the long grass with one arm by my side
lifting me up as I read out to her with all the others
and she reaches back. I want to know nothing
but the humming and fumbling of bees
carrying seed dust on their bellies from my blossoms
to hier blossoms in the dome of green shade.

Telephone Poles

Like our cars, which have our faces,
and our houses, which look down
on us under their folded hats,

these resemble us, though nothing
we have made seems so steadfast.
Exiled to the roadside,

they stand in all weather, ignored
except for the rows of swallows
that remember them in springtime,

and the occasional tree holding up
a hole workmen have cut
to let the lines through. Yet they go on

balancing cables on their shoulders
and passing them to the next
and the next, this one extending

a wire to a farmhouse, that one
at the corner sending lines
four ways at once, until miles

away where the road widens,
and the tallest poles rise,
bearing streetlamp high above

the doors of the town, arriving
by going nowhere at all, each
like the others that brought them here,

making its way by accepting
what’s given, and holding on,
and standing still.

Fourteen stories, all good, by fourteen writers. The third in order, Lily King's "Five Tuesdays in Winter," by startling me assured I would read the rest. "Elwood's Last Job" by Elaine Ford delivered the bewilderment of key characters. Amusing for me, not for them. Debra Spark's "A Short Wedding Story" coincidentally ended on a full page. When I turned to read what wasn't there I enjoyed the ending even more.

Twelve I read in sequence, but switched the last two so I finished with Stephen King's "The Reach." A wise decision. I don't know I'd say I saved the best for last, but I might.

This is a very odd anthology. It is not a collection of poets from Maine, nor is it a collection of poetry about Maine. Instead, it's a collection of poetry by poets who have some tie to Maine, whether the poem is about Maine or not. I met some interesting new poets here and I read some interesting poems about Maine, but what I really wanted was a collection of poetry that reflected what Maine is like. So every time I picked it up, I had this vaguely annoyed feeling, wondering how this poem or poet might be loosely connected to Maine. If you want an anthology of sort of random poems by US poets, mostly from the Northeast, this was interesting, but if you want something about Maine, look elsewhere.

An elegantly written memoir by Maine's Poet Laureate which tells the story of his struggle from a childhood filled with poverty and strife to academic and literary success. You won't find any self-pity here, just honesty and wonder. I also fancied the way McNair matched embedded poems with life events, so the reader could share his inspiration. Highly recommended.

I've been following Wesley McNair since the early 90s. He from my home state, but nationally known, albeit under-recognized by the general reading public. His poetry is clear, straightforward, thoughtful, and wonderfully-wrought. He writes about the extraordinary in the every day; beauty in a common moment, if you will. His poetry is reminiscent of that by Billy Collins, particularly in its accessibility. They are very much contemporaries, both born in 1941, and both writing about some of the same subjects around getting older.

I'd love to share a very funny poem that both my husband and I thought very clever and funny, titled "The Characters of Dirty Jokes," but I thought some might be offended (so, you'll have to buy the book! ha ha!). There is another one titled "Smoking", about Bogart & Bacall smoking on screen, that reminded me just a little of Billy Collins's "The Last Cigarette" - same wistfulness (it's too long to transcribe here). McNair has several poems in this collection related to hair, and the losing of it. "The Bald Spot," "On Losing My Hair," and this one:

Hymn to the Comb-Over

How the thickest of them erupt just
above the ear, cresting in waves so stiff
no wind can move them. Let us praise them
in all of their varieties, some skinny
as the bands of headphones, some rising
from a part that extnds halfway around
the head, others four or five strings
stretched so taut the scalp resembles
a musical instrument. Let us praise the sprays
that hold them, and the combs that coax
such abundance to the front of the head
in the mirror, the combers entirely forget
the back. And let us celebrate the combers,
who address the old sorrow of time's passing
day after day, bringing out of the barrenness
of mid-life this ridiculous and wonderful
harvest, no wishful flag of hope but, thick
or thin, the flag itself, unfurled for us all
in subways, office and mall across America.

Not only do I love the humor in this, but also the wistfulness and the sounds—the music of it is just wonderful. These are not his only subjects, of course.

A collection of wide-ranging stories from 14 Maine writers, edited by Maine literary don Wesley McNair. Some of the authors are well-known, such as Richard Russo, Richard Ford, Stephen King and Cathie Pelletier. The others are Carolyn Chute, Ellen Cooney, Eliane Ford, Susan Kenney, Lily King, Jim Nichols, Lewis Robinson, Bill Rorbach, Debra Spark, and Monica Wood. Not all of the stories take place in Maine, but all show the influence of the Maine spirit - tight knit communities, respect for the individual, and a respect for the inevitable. A good dose of Maine humor has been sprinkled throughout the collection. Favorite stories are Monica Wood's "Ernie's Ark," Stephen King's "The Reach," and Elaine Ford's "Elwood's Last Job."