Episode 11: Shane McCrae
Rachel Zucker speaks with Shane McCrae, professor and author of five books, about his poetic process, what he’s working on, and the current political climate. The two discuss the limitations of the term “confessional poetry,” the difficulties of writing about tragedies in the immediate wake of their occurrences, the impulse to witness humiliation in popular culture, the American anxiety of the long poem post-Eliot, and how one might curate an “overwhelming sadness” through art. Shane McCrae reads “In the Language” from his new book In the Language of My Captor, and “Forgiveness in America” from Forgiveness Forgiveness. An audio excerpt from Shane’s newest book-length poem and two hand-picked playlists are available to Patreon subscribers of Commonplace.
Books by Shane
The Animal Too Big To Kill (Persea, 2015)
Forgiveness Forgiveness (Factory Hollow Press, 2014)
Nonfiction (Black Lawrence Press, 2014)
Blood (Noemi Press, 2013)
In Canaan (Rescue Press, 2011)
Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2010)
Recent Books Recommended by Shane in the Episode
Donika Kelly’s Bestiary (Graywolf, 2016)
Anaïs Duplan’s Take this Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016)
Carolina Ebeid’s You Ask Me To Talk About The Interior (Noemi Press, 2016)
Sarah Deniz Akant’s Babette (Rescue Press, 2015)
Other Writers and Books Mentioned in the Episode
Richard Wilbur’s Collected Poems, 1943-2004 (Harcourt, 2004)
Sylvia Plath’s Ariel (Restored Edition, Harper, 2005)
Sylvia Plath’s The Colossus (Vintage, 1998)
Helen Dewitt’s The Last Samurai (New Directions, 2016)
Linda Pastan’s PM/AM (W.W. Norton, 1982)
Celestine Frost’s An Inhuman Revival (New Rivers Press, 1977)
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (Norton Critical Editions)
Music Mentioned
Composers:
Michael Hirsch
Gloria Coates
Robert Simpson
Bands:
Joy Division
The Cure
Have a Nice Life
Other Relevant Links
Shane McCrae on “Community,” via the Poetry Society of America
