Maureen N. McLane What You Want
ANGE MLINKO, LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
‘McLane is a Romantic poet out of time’
penguin books
What You Want
Raised in upstate New York, Maureen N. McLane is the author of seven previous books of poetry, including This Blue (2014), a finalist for the National Book Award, and Some Say (2017); What I’m Looking For: Selected Poems 2005–2017 was published by Penguin Books in 2019. Her book My Poets, a hybrid of memoir and criticism, was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She holds degrees from Harvard University, the University of Oxford and the University of Chicago, and teaches poetry and poetics at New York University.
What You Want
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First published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2023
Published in Penguin Books 2023 001
Copyright © Maureen N. McLane, 2023
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
The authorized representative in the EEA is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin d02 yh68
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn : 978–1–802–06314–1
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open sky—
what you want?
open channel—
what you want?
open sea—
open question—
Contents I Now Is the Cool of the Day 3 Get What You Want 5 Power 7 The Reach of the Sea 8 From a Book of Hours 10 Good Harbor Beach (They whistled everyone out . . . ) 12 Good Harbor Beach (Gull patrol . . . ) 14 Preferences 15 From a Book of Hours 17 II Self-Reliance 23 Snow 27 Winter 30 Register 32 Skying 34 Deflection: An Ode 36 Mud Season 42 Route 46 Correspondent Breeze 47
III Channel 53 Spring 56 Time to Eat 58 Trees 61 Summit 63 Every Place Is Also Another 65 Magpie 67 Crows 68 Solstice 70 Reprise 71 Eels 73 Flies 74 IV So Here We Are 79 Weeds 81 Sunflowers 83 Equinox 84 Poem (eat the clouds) 86 Open Sky 88 Since You Asked / Shore Lines 90 Moonrise 100 envoi 103 Notes 107 Acknowledgments 109 105 III Channel 53 Spring Time to Eat 58 Trees 61 Summit Every Place Is Also Another Magpie 67 Crows 68 Solstice Reprise Eels Flies 74 IV So Here We Are 79 Weeds 81 Sunflowers Equinox 84 Poem (eat the clouds) Open Sky 88 Since You Asked / Shore Lines 90 Moonrise 100 envoi 103 Notes Acknowledgments 109
I
Now Is the Cool of the Day
From here you used to see the sea. The gulls still palaver the fishing boats still eke out what they can. At dusk the Eastern Point Light every five seconds flashes white, the Dog Bar Light shines occulting red, the Ten Pound Island every six seconds blinks isophase red. These are their characteristics. So many beaches reefs and shoals named for woes then woes effaced like your footprint just now in wet sand.
You’ve only begun to learn the high tides and low the two of each a day. By day I mean also night. By night I mean the soft blank I used to be too shy to go swimming in. There are drowning children and one must try to save them. So she thought one thinks and died trying. The old ways of being a person have their hold
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on me and I move in the wake of baleful ships and a very few gods.
I want to find something to believe in the young poet said, beautiful vegan and scowling. It’s disgusting this posthumous stance I adopt some days and some days it’s thrust upon me, unwanted vestiture. She is only as beautiful as ever another poet “aging splendidly” with her delicate gold jewelry and avant clothes. She grew up three towns away from Donna Karan who is still alive. Yes I said to the student who wanted to analyze the fashion system in Swift. There’s no end to beauty and shit.
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