In his daring sophomore collection, Nathan McClain interrogates his speaker's American heritage, history, and responsibility. Investigating myth, popular culture, governance, and more, Previously Owned connects a villanelle cataloging Sisyphus's circular workflow to a Die Hard persona poem critiquing police brutality and joins complex pastorals to the stunning sequence entitled "They said I was an alternate," which recounts the author's experience serving on jury duty. Though McClain's muscular lyric explores a wide range of topics, the intensity of his attention and the profundity of his care remain constant-the final page describes a young girl in a diner, ringing the bell at the host stand, "just to hear it sing, the same / song, the only song // it knows." Insofar as this collection scrutinizes one's own culpability and responsibility in this country, interested in the natural world and beauty, as well as what beauty distracts us from, it does so in the hopes of reimagining inheritance, of leaving our children a different song.

Author: Nathan McClain
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Four Way Books
Published: 09/15/2022
Series: Stahlecker Selections
Pages: 120
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.91w x 0.39d
ISBN: 9781954245266


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 11/28/2022

About the Author

Nathan McClain was born and raised in the lower desert of Southern California. He is the author of Scale (Four Way Books, 2017), a recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a graduate of the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson. A Cave Canem fellow, his poems and prose have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Green Mountains Review, Guesthouse, The Common, and The Critical Flame, among others. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and African American Literary Arts at Hampshire College and serves as poetry editor of the Massachusetts Review.