This is a novel that, I think, is best read after having at least visited Cooperstown, New York. Not a novel in verse, not a poetic journal, but a lyric chronicle, this utterly unique book reclaims territory long abandoned by American poetry, a characteristic ambition of Campbell McGrath, one of the most honored, accessible, and humanistically engaged writers of our time. Taken collectively, Seven Notebooks composes a season-by-season account of a year in the life of its narrator, from spring in Chicago to summer at the Jersey Shore to winter in Miami Beach. Written in forms that range from haiku to prose, and in a voice that veers from incantatory to deadpan, these seven poetic sequences offer diverse reflections on language and poetry, time and consciousness, civilization and art-to say nothing of bureaucrats, surfboards, and blue margaritas. Such is the expansive terrain of Seven Notebooks: the world as it is seen, known, imagined, and dreamed our lives as they are felt, thought, desired, and lived.
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