A Mountain City of Toad Splendor

by Megan McShea

This is an intricate and wowing collection of poetry and prose that asks “how is it out there with you?” “Approaching greatness sideways like ants without eyes?” Or “just beckoning horrors?” No matter the weight of your spirit or whether you have feelings for “a toffee, a tart, perfect bedlam,” Megan McShea bids you welcome to hike with her (keep your buggy fingers out of her special blend rutabaga trail mix, though) into A Mountain City of Toad Splendor.

It’s as if Swiss writer Robert Walser is watching from his nearby shanty, chuckling gently and playing a vibey song, blowing through leaves in his hand, sing-chanting better days, better days.

HTMLGiant’s editor Blake Butler has climbed the Mountain and heard “700 kinds of music.” He calls it “full time demon voodoo,” as he drapes his sweat and yogurt-stained lederhosen on a pinyon-juniper near a peak.

Whatever your “it” is, have you not grown weary of it? Girl, McShea knows all about it—look inside.

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Paperback

First published March 19, 2013

Reviews

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Ashbery says surprise is one of the key ingredients of great literature. He was specifically talking about Jane Bowles, but he might as well have meant Megan McShea. From sentence-to-sentence and often from phrase-to-phrase, McShea leaves you astonished. You're never quite sure what's around the next comma, but her short prose poems cohere with their own internal logic. Her work tries to short circuit normal meaning while crucially also striving to connect. These pieces are unfailingly warm, generous, and shot through with a questing spirit of unpredictable adventure.

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. It is very original music. I can sing them. I did sing them. On the tube in London at 12.22AM. With bugs and hot spots. Tossed by waves and even sand. An old way of talking and of being. It is a new way too. Is it Clark Coolidge? Sometimes. Is it Max Jacob? Sometimes. Is it Tom Raworth? Sometimes. Is it Megan Mcshea? YES!

If only tyrants behaved a little more like this!


Publishing Genius has done it again.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

When light draws objects effortlessly, one seems to fly along with it.

Following a sudden thrilling take-off, I flew along with Megan McShea as she showed me all the words she loves, how she cleverly seats them together, these refugees from repurposed lists and dreams, how she slyly repeats the ones that maybe she loves the most, in surprising and intricate ways, threading them through lined and unlined forms, nudging them toward illicit capers with unfamiliar partners, and ushering them all out onto the page with gusto, pinched and wrapped into cat's cradles of her own linguistic twine.

I listened as she "used the white noise of a fan to cut the glare of silence." For there is not much silence in this book. And what silence there is soon bubbles into another frothy round of feisty wordplay. I stood by nodding in solemn agreement when she spoke of "the season when plants die, but we're expected to just go on living." For I know that season. My eyes widened as "a huge number of doubts crowded the business of packing and unpacking her trusted future astonishment." And in her homage to Frank O'Hara, she helped me to reconsider all of us as lepidopterans:

Half of all moths want to get closer
the other half is wary

I felt her meaning when she wrote that "we cannot tolerate the randomness of light and time." And I'm almost certain just the other morning I woke up to "the damp fog of dissipated purpose" wisping past my window. And then there is the sinewy ache of lines like this:

My long field drains the sky of its open, its air darkening with you stretching out in it.

What I am trying to say is the slimness of McShea's first full-length volume belies the "toad splendor" within. Do not be deceived by its slender countenance. These are poems and prose pieces to sit and tinker with in one's mind, to dissect, to pull apart and masticate, only to return again at later dates for seconds and thirds and fourths, until perhaps the zig-zag streets of the mountain city begin to grow familiar to you, as well.

[Jamie Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

You should read this book, and you should probably read it more slowly than I did -- I'm sure I'll go back to re-dip. I found myself already re-reading many of the poems when I'd be half through them, not because I didn't understand, but because I wanted to see again how Megan got from A to B to C one more time now that I knew where we were going. There's a lot to quote were I the quoting-in-a-review type... Enjoy.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unzip the jeans of reality and crawl into this collection. Then snuggle with it in the sleeping bag of the sun. Writing these must have been more than the ninth most successful feeling. Something special lingers in the words, it took me so long to read these because I kept finding new turns.

“She brought you here, but now you need to find your own reasons to stay, or else move along.”

[Keila Cruz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous poems; appreciate the varieties of forms.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://nanofiction.org/weekly-feature...

[J.A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of prose poetry and poetry reminds me of several previous PGP titles. It has the flavor of Chris Toll, Rupert Wondolowski, and even a little Edward Mullany and Mairéad Byrne. This isn't to say that McShea doesn't have her own voice and style (she absolutely does and it is ripe), but just that if you dug those other books, add this one to your to-read list.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Other work by Megan: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...
also http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/85...

[Joseph Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mountain City is a pleasure organ, meaning that beneath its surface of maybe first-seeming fog are all sorts of warm lights and music. Yes!

[Jonathan Mayhew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful sentences invoking images inhabit this collection.