Capacity, the extraordinary new collection from the award-winning poet James McMichael, deliberates an earth that supplies what people need to live. Ocean, land, animate bodies, shelter, thoughts, feelings, talk, sex--each is addressed at the pace of someone dense with wonder's resistance to take for granted even the smallest or most obvious parts of existence.
"McMichael is the 13-year cicada of poetry. With roughly the same regularity he surfaces, sheds his old skin and delivers a song that's entirely his own . . . Everything, from immigration patterns to heartsickness, is described in the same objective, almost clinical tone--a strange and wonderful choice, lending disproportionate power to the subtlest gestures."
The New York Times Book Review, Eric McHenry
"[McMichael's] strongest work . . . What makes him so unique in American poetry right now is the strength and subtlety with which he blends conceptual ambition with emotional power."
