The Dictionary of Unspellable Noises: New & Selected Poems 1975 - 2018

The Dictionary of Unspeakable Noise: New & Selected Poems 1975-2018 shows how Clint McCown ". . .keeps a wry eye on the universe and thereby keeps his sanity and ours." And why "He is asking all or most of the big questions, which are still the right questions," according to Roger Mitchell. Matthew Dickman says that McCown's poetry ". . .delves into the unruly world of nature, not as a guide or simply as scenery, but with the steady gaze of the late John Haines. Here nature, family, and selfhood are not just talked about but explored and questioned." Open this book to any page and you'll find Clint McCown turning the universe over and over in his mind to find the answers to his sometimes unusual and always perceptive questions.

Review :
Clint McCown is a casually cosmic poet... Nothing in the world is too large or too small for these disturbing epiphanies. Elemental forces are at work here. In the end, the fruits of this experience turn out to be persimmons from McCown's native Tennessee: irresistible to the taste, but capable of puckering our blander assumptions. --Philip Appleman Clint McCown's new book of poetry delves into the unruly world of nature, not as a guide or simply as scenery, but with the steady gaze of the late John Haines. Here nature, family, and selfhood are not just talked about but explored and questioned. --Matthew Dickman Clint McCown keeps a wry eye on the universe and thereby keeps his sanity and ours. He is asking all or most of the big questions, which are still the right questions. --Roger Mitchell In this marvelous collection of poems by one of our very best storytellers, time slows like the light does at the end of the day. Nature drives a hard bargain. We milk a dead cow to save her newborn calf. No matter how deep the fence posts were set, the soil loosens. "Experience / speaks a language all its own." Our mortality is everywhere. In contemplation, "we are the universe / asking itself a question." And it's a bitter truth, Clint McCown's wisdom, his sweet wisdom. --Ralph Angel These poems perceptively consider our mysteries and our limitations. "Thinking is the only voice I own," McCown writes, but he also sings with a rough and seasoned music. --Mark Cox The poems of Clint McCown are, at once, droll and heartbreaking. --Baron Wormser No easy truths here, but a fine tragic-comic balance between "misfortune and sheer grace." Love of mystery and the many blindsiding forms of our undoing duke it out in these verbally adroit, quick-witted poems. "Breakage has its upside," the poet says, and one sure sign of that is in the brilliance glinting through this book. --Betsy Sholl There is always a searching intelligence in his writing that eschews both cynicism and posturing, that is driven to assess the past, but refuses the easy blandishments of nostalgia or regret. It is refreshing... to encounter a poet of the Horatian tradition, one who seeks balance, lucidity, and above all a hard-won wisdom. --David Wojahn