Seven Notebooks

> An ant to the stars

> or stars to the ant—which is

> more irrelevant?

> Weekend Jet Skiers—

> rude to call them idiots,

> yes, but facts are facts.

> Clamor of seabirds

> as the sun falls—I look up

> and ten years have passed."

> —from "Dawn Notebook"

> Such is the expansive terrain of *Seven Notebooks* : the world as it is seen, known, imagined, and dreamed; our lives as they are felt, thought, desired, and lived. Written in forms that range from haiku to prose, and in a voice that veers from incanta­tory to deadpan, these seven poetic sequences offer diverse reflections on language and poetry, time and consciousness, civilization and art—to say nothing of bureaucrats, surfboards, and blue margaritas. Taken collectively, *Seven Notebooks* composes a season-by-season account of a year in the life of its narrator, from spring in Chicago to summer at the Jersey Shore to winter in Miami Beach. Not a novel in verse, not a poetic journal, but a lyric chronicle, this utterly unique book reclaims territory long abandoned by American poetry, a characteristic ambition of Campbell McGrath, one of the most honored, accessible, and humanistically engaged writers of our time.