Inquest - by Michael McGriff (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"A blend of the low-rent sociology of Raymond Carver with the quirky imagination of Richard Brautigan."-Billy Collins

Michael McGriff's book-length poem Inquest is an oblique ode to Pablo Neruda's posthumous masterpiece The Book of Questions. Each sentence is rendered as an unanswerable query, be that a consideration of poverty, aesthetics, place, Ezra Pound's Chinese translations, the absurdity of everyday life, the exhumed body of Pablo Neruda, or the sanctity of common objects. Deeply surreal and humane, this collection centers unknowing and wonder as twin forces central to self-articulation, social witnessing, and survival.

Review Quotes

"What better way to enter a zone of negative capability, a zone John Keats believed was necessary to the creation of art, than to enter a self-imposed state of unknowing and remain there by asking questions that have no answers? In the marvel-filled collection of poems that is Inquest, each poem, paying homage to Pablo Neruda's Book of Questions, is made up entirely of questions--questions that move in and out of surrealism, social witnessing, and lyric self-expression. Michael McGriff, an accomplished and dare I say brilliant poet, has written a book of poems that begin and end in negative capability, along the way delighting the reader with the stunning and relentless inventiveness and fecundity of his imagination. I am in awe."--Gail Wronsky, author of Some Disenfranchised Evening

Praise for Michael McGriff:

"Angel Sharpening its Beak is a sublime book of gathering darkness. Vaporous and seductive, Michael McGriff's poetry documents the richness and cruelty of American life, in which the perfectly rendered image is the only stay against death, against forgetting: 'Thunderheads stack above the crow / whose reflection crosses / the oiled skin of my coffee / while it cools in my hands.' In their embrace of winter, their courtship of oblivion, McGriff's new poems are dangerously beautiful." --Richie Hofmann

"A blend of the low-rent sociology of Raymond Carver with the quirky imagination of Richard Brautigan ...Eternal Sentences will come at its readers as a series of happily endless delights."--Billy Collins

"Michael McGriff is not only an uncanny and meticulous observer, he is, I believe, of the moment where poems come from--and he intuits them from anywhere and anything. Every line in every poem is an intimate and varying unit, a measurement of insight and experience. Every poem, despite its brevity, holds within it a vivid and moving cinematic precision. It is textured, lucid and lit like amber."--Malena Mörling

About the Author

Michael McGriff is the author of six poetry collections, Inquest, Angel Sharpening its Beak, Eternal Sentences, Early Hour, Home Burial, and Dismantling the Hills. His other books include the linked story collection Our Secret Life in the Movies (co-authored with J.M. Tyree); an edition of David Wevill's essential writing, To Build My Shadow a Fire; and a translation of Tomas Tranströmer's The Sorrow Gondola. He co-directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Idaho.