My Poets

A thrillingly original exploration of a life lived under poetry€s uniquely seductive spell

€œOh! there are spirits of the air,€ wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley. In this stunningly original book, Maureen N. McLane channels the spirits and voices that make up the music in one poet€s mind. Weaving criticism and memoir, My Poets explores a life reading and a life read. McLane invokes not necessarily the best poets, nor the most important poets (whoever these might be), but those writers who, in possessing her, made her. €œI am marking here what most marked me,€ she writes. Ranging from Chaucer to H.D. to William Carlos Williams to Louise Glck to Shelley (among others), McLane tracks the €œgrowth of a poet€s mind,€ as Wordsworth put it in The Prelude. In poetical prose both probing and incantatory, McLane has written a radical book of experimental criticism. Susan Sontag called for an €œerotics of interpretation€: this is it. Part Bildung, part dithyramb, part exegesis, My Poets extends an implicit invitation to you, dear reader, to consider who your €œmy poets,€ or €œmy novelists,€ or €œmy filmmakers,€ or €œmy pop stars,€ might be.