In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys - by Campbell McGrath (Paperback)

About the Book

"McGrath [is] a writer who could help save poetry from academia and get the rest of us reading it again."--Outside Magazine

From the MacArthur "Genius Grant" and Kingsley Tufts Award winner Campbell McGrath, acclaimed author of Shannon, comes In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys, an electric new collection of poetry. Writing in the poetic tradition of Walt Whitman, McGrath captivates with ironic romanticism as he lyrically explores the banality of the everyday--from the decay and transformation of the nation's cities to "Shopping for Pomegranates at Wal-Mart on New Year's Day"--in poems that entreat us to love what endures amid the detritus of American pop culture.

Book Synopsis

"McGrath [is] a writer who could help save poetry from academia and get the rest of us reading it again."
--Outside Magazine

From the MacArthur "Genius Grant" and Kingsley Tufts Award winner Campbell McGrath, acclaimed author of Shannon, comes In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys, an electric new collection of poetry. Writing in the poetic tradition of Walt Whitman, McGrath captivates with ironic romanticism as he lyrically explores the banality of the everyday--from the decay and transformation of the nation's cities to "Shopping for Pomegranates at Wal-Mart on New Year's Day"--in poems that entreat us to love what endures amid the detritus of American pop culture.

From the Back Cover

From the MacArthur genius grant and Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winner Campbell McGrath, an electric new collection of poetry that asks us to love what lasts amid the detritus of American culture

After nearly a decade, In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys marks a return for Campbell McGrath to the poetic forms that brought him national acclaim--lyrical meditations on American art and society by turns satirical, tender, and haunted by the merciless work of time. In poems such as "Dick Cheney Speaks to Me in a Dream" and "Shopping for Pomegranates at Wal-Mart on New Year's Day," McGrath explores the intersection of the personal and the public realms of American culture like no other poet at work today. Whether he's documenting the decay and transformation of American cities, eulogizing Allen Ginsberg and Frank O'Hara, or rhapsodizing on the extramortal lifespan of books, McGrath writes poems of dazzling energy, intelligence, humor, and engagement. In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys is a collection of dreams, visions, jibes, essays, arguments, and love songs, each of them transformed into poetry by one of our most honored and entertaining poets.

Review Quotes

PRAISE FOR SHANNON: "[SHANNON is] equal parts a hallucination of malnourishment and a meditation on a new, westering nation's discovery of its own inestimable riches . . . it instills a gradual sense of spaciousness and wonder. . . . Surely, the sort of task McGrath undertakes here represents one of literature's profoundest pleasures. A poet tirelessly digs up something buried by days, years, centuries. And then he holds it to the light." - Washington Post
"A luminescent narrative...the stanza spacing, the line breaks and the quiet rhythms of Shannon's speech ...suggest the continent's vastness...Shannon's understated lyricism -- the apprehension of nature before the onset of self-consciousness...reflects heightened maturity in McGrath's work." - Kansas City Star
"McGrath takes us back to a pivotal point in United States history through the curious eyes of an unsung hero. ['Shannon' is] an unexpected story and a gem of a book." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"A shining example of why [McGrath's] other works have been recognized by some of the most prestigious American poetry awards in the country...a seamless poetic dialog...The poet has exhibited an astonishing facility for evoking sweep and nuance and connecting them to the reader in a refined and absorbing narrative. "Shannon" is a fitting tribute to one of the greatest of American adventures." - Charleston Post & Courier
PRAISE FOR SEVEN NOTEBOOKS: "McGrath (Seven Notebooks) here presents us with a solidly American epic about the Lewis and Clark expedition, or parallel to it. Taking an interesting poetic tack, he tells us the story of young George Shannon, who, separated from the party while off to retrieve runaway horses, gets lost, and wanders the prairie alone for 16 days. Faithful to the language, tone, and style of written journals from the time, McGrath's Shannon glories in the wonder of the land, especially the mystery and majesty of the buffalo, as we readers do in the spirit of the man... Recommended for poetry collections and an illuminating adjunct to American history collections." - Library Journal
"These notebooks are Campbell McGrath's record of the passing seasons in a year. They contain odes to blueberries ('a democracy of spheres'), beer and bureaucrats ('pallid eye-balls / immured / in fluorescent cubicles'), tributes to Whitman and Rilke. 'The world has flooded over me, ' the poet writes, and sometimes it feels this way to read his work. But more often a feeling of calm descends...tension comes only from the poet's effort to live in time, to record the quality of colors in Chicago, to notice the way his body feels in different places." - Los Angeles Times
"In Seven Notebooks, award-winning poet and professor Campbell McGrath delivers a year of intimate journal entries along with poems in a characteristically big, brainy, voluminous book. Although the poetry feels effortless and serendipitously ordered to resonate with the diary, we recognize designing craft at work in the poet's mindful observations...McGrath's consummate opus...[a] thriving plentitude of American poetry." - Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel