Fire

We are delighted to continue our relationship with Wes McNair, one of New England's best poets, through his newest book of poetry. In this collection his fourth to be published by Godine McNair writes on a wide range of subjects, casting his eye on everything from his own pet dog to an executive's torments in Hell. But the real beauty of the collection does not lie with its range, but with its carefully tended boundaries. Because he has grouped each section of poems in the book around a theme that is narrow enough to be definitive but ambiguous enough to prevent the poems from becoming pedantic or merely clever, McNair successfully speaks in both a personal tone, evoking an essay or memoir, and a more distant one, reminiscent of a folklorist.

Fire is one of McNair's most beautifully constructed collections of poetry, exquisite not only in the careful balance of its structure of long poems against short, of personal against universal, of descriptive against reflective but also in the detailed and authentic cadence of the true New Englander's voice that resounds through every line.