Anthony McCann and “I <3 Your Fate”
The poet Matthew Dickman comes out high and jolly for Anthony McCann’s 2011 collection I <3 Your Fate:
“I ♥ Your Fate” is a lyric book of poems that will make you feel like picking up a guitar, a paintbrush, dance your ass off alone in your room. That is to say, McCann will make you feel alive.
This may say more about Dickman than it actually does about the collection itself. He posits the following as a sample of McCann’s prowess:
Or in his poem, “Mammal Island”:
Like a ghost
showing its
first
tender
ghosthood
And then wraps things up with:
You might not “get” exactly what he is saying but you will feel what he is meaning. You will be moved by something pre-historic and radiant. Which is to say: you will be moved by this mysterious, lyric, ecstatic thing: poetry.
I think there should be a mode of critique for critiques. Or a mode of critique for blurbs, whichever this happens to be.
