Road Atlas: Prose and Other Poems [Paperback]

Campbell McGrath (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 2001

From Brazil to Manitoba, Las Vegas to Miami Beach, 1999 MacArthur Fellow Campbell McGrath charts a poetics of place and everyday experience. Road Atlas is personal, provocative and accessible -- the finest work yet from "the most Swiftian poet of his generation" (David Biespiel, Hungry Mind Review).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

McGrath once wrote energetically edgy, slightly difficult poems in long lines or in short prose blocks, slippery, slightly Whitmanesque catalogues of American problems, places, jobs, road trips and aggravations. He still writes them, but the edge seems diminished: the lushly topographical poems of this fourth book (most of them prose poems) have abandoned the self-skeptical oddities that made McGrath's debut, Capitalism, invigorating. Here, McGrath aims to depict an array of sites from middle America to the Latin American tropics; but the poems give the feel less of Port Olry or Miami or Tabernacle, N.J., than of a self-confident urge to describe. Part of the American Southwest is an "awful wasteland, desolate, sun-stricken, palpably grievous"; elsewhere grasshoppers' bodies are found "crushed and mangled, scaled and armatured, primordial, pharaonic." The Hoover Dam, on the other hand, is a "titanic concrete angel wing," and also "the many-chambered heart of a thing beyond our knowing." All the places the poet sees seem to stand for the human spirit, and it can thus be hard to tell them apart. The best (and most essayistic) of the book's prose blocks recall Annie Dillard in their expansive vividness. But most lack the intellective constraints, the internal questioners, that would block the road to sentimental excess. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

This fourth collection by the much-awarded (and this-round MacArthur grant recipient) Florida International University creative-writing professor continues the sense (from Spring Comes to Chicago and the other books) that McGrath fancies himself working a genre all his own: prose riffs that sometimes tell little stories but are not bound by the conventions of narrative. Except for some extra-long-line poems in the C.K.Williams vein, McGrath spares us the pretense of poetic lines; despite his imagistic language, his paragraphs seldom sound especially lyrical; nor do they flow on particularly poetic rhythms. Mostly, they seem like notebook jottings for a larger projecta memoir or a travelogue. Prose Poem, which is the closest thing here to an ars poetica, relies on an extended metaphor of formal fields and the varieties of farming types. And McGraths subsequent prose passages do little to clear matters up. Many of his pieces concern travel: Plums, a typical example, recalls a hill in Nebraska and ends with the Whitmanesque echo: I was there. I bore witness to that moment. McGrath considers moments like this far more significant than his readers will, who might simply be envious of his itinerary: he remembers a superb meal in Tunis, a festival in Brazil, a swim off a Gulf Coast island, a one-night stand in Amsterdam, his brothers wedding in Las Vegas, and a family trip to Naples. For all his hipster, on the road posing, McGrath goes soft when it comes to his sons, whom he quotes for cutesy effect. And his political commentary is best exhibited in the pretentiously titled Capitalist Poem #42, which lists all that his family buys at Costco, before declaring it the Grand Canyon of commodities. McGrath wants us to share his enthusiasm for the freedom and speed of the open road, but these sluggish prose pieces and poems barely reach 55. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Ecco (July 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060935103
• ISBN-13: 978-0060935108
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,114,838 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent read, January 20, 2000

By 

Buckeye (Harvard, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Road Atlas (Hardcover)

Not being a poetry expert or critic of any sort I can't comment on whether McGrath's writing is "sloppy" or not. Frankly, I don't think it is, and the whole issue of whether or not it conforms to some accepted or proper format or "way-to-write-poetry" seems terribly unimportant to me. Substance means a lot more to me than style, and whether or not something speaks to me matters a lot more than then form in which it's said. So, questions of proper form aside, I'd just like to say that the writing in this book accomplished what I *think* poetry is supposed to do - it reached something deep inside me and spoke to it. I loved this book.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Raising America's Voice, March 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Road Atlas (Hardcover)

The joyous beauty of this slim volume lies not only in the words (although there is an abundance there) but in its spirit. Every few generations, America is blessed with a voice to sing its joys and sorrows. Not in the smug tones of advertizers, nor in the hollow praise of politicians, but in the honed voice of a moved, by wary, traveler across the land.This young (I presume) poet has already been compared to Whitman or Ginsberg. High praise, deserved, but off the mark.This is the voice---cautious but never cynical-of the poet'sown generation: people, places, lists of the wonders and enormities viewed not with arrogance but with wonder. Read them....and travel along.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Road Atlas" offers a thrilling ride, July 8, 1999

By 

Voice of Chunk (NY) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Road Atlas (Hardcover)

"Road Atlas" is a fitting title for this wonderful collection as Campbell McGrath brings the reader on a journey through various settings, subjects, styles and forms, the pitstops and detours as fascinating as the racing straightaways. If "Spring Comes To Chicago" demonstrated McGrath's command of the Whitmanesque American epic poem, then "Road Atlas" shows his proficiency as a prose poet, a la James Wright. Word for word this is some of the most gorgeous and moving poetry I've read in a long time.