The pieces in this book vary. There are narratives, surrealistic explorations of contemporary situations, social and political polemics, humor, and more. Many of the pieces contain literary and other cultural allusions that the reader will enjoy discovering, though identifying every allusion is not a necessary condition for enjoying a piece. The indirection and suggestiveness that characterize the pieces encourages and impels the reader toward a creation or discovery of their own. The book aims to be hospitable to a wide range of experiences and moods. Prose poetry is written without the line breaks normally associated with poetry while making use of the heightened language one expects to find in a poem. Poetic devices such as compression, fragmentation, sonic echoing, metaphor and other figures of speech create the lyricism and word play we find in poems.
Excerpt
Glass Houses
I thought an aquarium would be a good idea. Rainbows moving back and forth before the picture window. Sprinkling in a little fish food and watching them purse their lips as if to kiss. What a way to spend the rest of my life. I didn't know she had a traumatic experience in college with “Prufrock,” that passage about the sea-girls at the end. They think we’re fish, she would say whenever we went to Benny’s. I never really thought that much about how angelfish inhabit a similar life space to the handcuffed crabs at Benny’s Baltimore Buffet. Anyway, I watch them – well, it’s really other them now (the tropical species don’t last long) – gliding through the failing light. The postman looking sadly through the window as he takes another letter.
Early Works is an exhaustive compilation of the first decade of the poems and stories of Z.B.McClure. Included are family photos, rare personal photos, photos of 1st draft manuscripts of many of his early poems. Also some biography and memoir materia
