Radiation

The American Poetry Series #1

by Sandra McPherson

Book by Mcpherson, Sandra

Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

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.

Reviews

[Javier · Rating 4 out of 5]

sleeping on this one. Feels darker than The Year of our Birth or Elegies for the Hot Season.

[Abigail Munson · Rating 1 out of 5]

yuck

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok. So this one is okay. I'm giving it a firm 'ok.'

It was a nice book. I had to re-read it to really begin confronting it. The structure of her poems is sometimes erratic, but the tone is thoroughly consistent. Like finding a place to sleep in a strange house.

But I'm warning you there a a few duds, like "A Pumpkin at New Year's." This one goes on and on about a fucking pumpkin, all "Khrushev-cheeked" and "indeed your stem seems punched into your orange gathers like a button in a mattress..." Oh please. Just because you have a couple nice images DOES NOT make a pumpkin relevant. Ew.

But, don't be too down on Sandra yet:

...That is how
I might move my hands in her like dulled blades...

OR "Water Poems"

Here's where the ships are expected.
So it is a place for you to begin
going away.

The days leave from here.
Why not my little pressure
evaporating from your hand.
The sea is postureless.
You'll be back in its mirror
like the moon.
This is where the sailor
asked no one permission
to come home when he's ready.

Yeah. I dig shit like that. But let me tell you why... I think the phrase "begin going away" is strange. Because it sounds like the beginning and ending are the same thing. Picture it. The way we met is the way we left eachother. And that gives one the impression that all is wonderfully lost--and there's no hope of telling it. The story, that is. And "little pressure" seems so perfect, put next to a postureless sea. Because the ending is in our posture, our supports giving way, how silently we keep enduring it. And I guess I like stories like that... Where we look into it and "when you arrive empty / I realize too / I have said nothing."

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not really sure what the subject of this poem is, or what is "radiating." Many of the poems, I find, use a weak device to pull me in. Or, worse, they don't pull me in at all.

[Mills College Library]

811 M172r 1973