Provides a collection of poems about the history and dreams of Florida, including "The slaves," "The alligators," "Benediction for the savior of Orlando," and "The trouble with Miami".

Florida Poems

Literature & Fiction

McGrath, Campbell

Poetry

Ecco

Part fable, part diatribe, part elegy, part love song, this extraordinary fifth collection by Campbell McGrath makes poetry of the most unlikely of materials - his home state of Florida. While at times poignantly personal, McGrath also returns for the first time to the characteristically comic and visionary public voice displayed in the renowned "Bob Hope Poem." Moving effortlessly from prehistory to the space age, he catalogues Florida's natural wonders and historical figureheads, from Ponce de LeÓn to Walt Disney, William Bartram to Chuck E. Cheese - "the bewhiskered Mephistopheles of ring toss,/the diabolical vampire of our transcendent ideals." In the brilliant sociohistorical monologue of "The Florida Poem," McGrath employs the Fountain of Youth as a mythic symbol for both the tragic consequences of a society built on greed and cultural erasure and the diverse human potential, "which must become the fountain/for any communal future we might dare imagine." Place-bound and tightly focused, Campbell McGrath's message is nonetheless universal, as his penetrating vision of Florida is also a vision of America - its history and hopes, failings and fulfillments, and the eternal force that transcends it all.

Essays & Correspondence

A collection of eloquent, culturally engaged poems that amount to Campbell McGrath's best book yet.
"America's epic is the odyssey of appetite," Campbell McGrath declares, and these poems track those defining hungers across a social landscape by turns "grave, risible, amazing, banal," cataloging the "?vortex of images in a ruined theater the culture comes to resemble," from Rocky and Bullwinkle to "Blue Angels rampant on a field of static, / anthem and flag descending to darkness." In terza rima meditations, rock-and-roll elegies, and abecedarian lyrics, Pax Atomica documents the tangled romance between self and society ("in which / the melody's ampersand ensnares us") in ways both new and familiar to readers of McGrath's five previous volumes.
A continuation as well as a departure for one of America's most highly honored poets, this is poetry of formal eloquence and rhetorical power, of vision and engagement. Pax Atomica descends into the maelstrom of American culture and emerges singing.

Pax Atomica: Poems

"America's epic is the odyssey of appetite," Campbell McGrath declares, and these poems track those defining hungers across a social landscape by turns "grave, risible, amazing, banal," cataloging the "vortex of images in a ruined theater the culture comes to resemble," from Rocky and Bullwinkle to "Blue Angels rampant on a field of static, / anthem and flag descending to darkness." In terza rima meditations, rock-and-roll elegies, and abecedarian lyrics, Pax Atomica documents the tangled romance between self and society ("in which / the melody's ampersand ensnares us") in ways both new and familiar to readers of McGrath's five previous volumes. A continuation as well as a departure for one of America's most highly honored poets, this is poetry of formal eloquence and rhetorical power, of vision and engagement. Pax Atomicadescends into the maelstrom of American culture and emerges singing.

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).

Road Atlas: Prose and Other Poems

Reference

An ant to the stars or stars to the ant—which is more irrelevant?
Weekend Jet Skiers— rude to call them idiots, yes, but facts are facts.
Clamor of seabirds as the sun falls—I look up and ten years have passed." —from "Dawn Notebook"
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. 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. 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. 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.

Seven Notebooks: Poems

United States

“An unexpected story and a gem of a book.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The incomparable Campbell McGrath, whom Outside magazine calls, “A writer who could help save poetry from academia and get the rest of us reading it again,” delivers an astounding work: Shannon, an epic poem that traces the remarkable journey of the youngest member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The Kansas City Star praises Shannon as, “A luminescent narrative…a myth of American character before its corruption,” and Campbell McGrath—Poet Laureate, Guggenheim Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, and three-time Academy of American Poets Prize winner—proves once again to be truly an “everyman poet” who channels the spirit of Walt Whitman in this lyrical adventure.

Shannon: A Poem of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

“McGrath [is] a writer who could help save poetry from academia and get the rest of us reading it again.” —Outside Magazine
From the MacArthur “Genius Grant” and Kingsley Tufts Award winner Campbell McGrath, acclaimed author of Shannon, comes In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys, an electric new collection of poetry. Writing in the poetic tradition of Walt Whitman, McGrath captivates with ironic romanticism as he lyrically explores the banality of the everyday—from the decay and transformation of the nation’s cities to “Shopping for Pomegranates at Wal-Mart on New Year’s Day”—in poems that entreat us to love what endures amid the detritus of American pop culture.

In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys: Poems

Pulitzer Prize finalist 
A poetic history of the twentieth century from one of our most beloved, popular, and highly lauded poets—a stirring, strikingly original, intensely imagined recreation of the most potent voices and searing moments that have shaped our collective experience.
XX is award-winning poet Campbell McGrath’s astonishing sequence of one hundred poems—one per year—written in a vast range of forms, and in the voices of figures as varied as Picasso and Mao, Frida Kahlo and Elvis Presley. Based on years of historical research and cultural investigation, XX turns poetry into an archival inquiry and a choral documentary. Hollywood and Hiroshima, Modernism and propaganda, Bob Dylan and Walter Benjamin—its range of interest encompasses the entire century of art and culture, invention and struggle.
Elegiac and celebratory, deeply tragic and wickedly funny, XX is a unique collection from this acknowledged master of historical poetry, and his most ambitious book yet.

XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century

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Books by McGrath, Campbell

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McGrath, Campbell. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Florida Poems

Florida Poems

Pax Atomica: Poems

Pax Atomica: Poems

Road Atlas: Prose and Other Poems

Seven Notebooks: Poems

Shannon: A Poem of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Shannon: A Poem of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys: Poems

XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century