How To Be This Man

by Sandra McPherson (Editor)

Poetry. HOW TO BE THIS MAN collects men's evocations and invocations of maleness and boyhood. While each man sounds like himself, the poets also speak with one voice, affirming the self-portraits we leave of ourselves and the community we join in. Poets include Clarence Major, Marvin Bell, Jack Marshall, Walter Pavlich, John Olivares Espinoza, Alejandro Escude, Francisco Aragon, and Eric Gudas.

87 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

Sandra McPherson was raised in San Jose, California. She went to college in California, then studied with Elizabeth Bishop at the University of Washington. She writes of her relationships with husband, daughter, parents, teachers, and friends with a sense of both the possibilities and limits of intimacy. Her poems are oblique and often difficult, yet are always firmly anchored in perception and experience, and she weaves vivid images culled from nature into what Contemporary Women Poets contributor David Young characterizes as "rich, complex, and deeply satisfying poems." In collections that include the National Book Award-nominated The Year of Our Birth, At the Grave of Hazel Hall, and Edge Effect: Trails and Portrayals, McPherson has increasingly honed her unsentimental, insightful verse, imbuing it with images reflective of diverse folk arts and refining her expressions of a cultural perspective that is uniquely American.