Tree of Heaven
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
This second book by James McKean displays a large, dignified, and precise talent—McKean is always looking and reaching out to the difficult world, pulling it to him for examination. Although beginning with outward themes of travels and crossings, Tree of Heaven circles in the end to the journeys of the inner life: the struggle to understand, the ability to see, to suffer the trials of illness and death, to survive love and longing, learning when to leave things as they are, when to let go. McKean’s accomplished voice is quiet but firm, at times full of wonder, exploring the personal and discovering what salvation there is in rhythm and words.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A co-winner of the 1994 Iowa Poetry Prize, much of this wriggling, writhing collection swarms with animals--fireflies, cockroaches, dogs, pigs, magpies, a pelican, a sow bear--whose activities intersect and merge with human life. When McKean anthropomorphizes (``canaries that sing for all/ they cannot have'') and, less frequently employs its opposite number, theriomorphism, ascribing animal qualities to humans, he seems to suggest that the animals have something profound to say about humans, as in the first poem, ``Fireflies,'' which concludes ``How/like us to... wander/ our whole lives, dragging a lamp/ that gives us away.'' In these poems, grouped mainly in the first section, McKean seems to attach a specific significance to the creatures, as though they were fortune cookies. More direct and crisper are the poems in the latter two parts, where human figures, often parents and children, take pride of place, e.g.,``Splitting Wood,'' ``Fire Line'' and ``Silver Thaw.'' Given such clear points of focus, McKean's mostly short lines offer up images that illuminate the human condition from within. These poems are simple, complex and moving.
