Whatever Falls - by Anthony McCann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Written in the woodlands of New York's Hudson and Mohawk Valleys during a crisis moment in his mother's Alzheimer's disease, Whatever Falls leads readers through terrains of forest, hospital, home, and history. Along the way, the poem deftly holds the counterbalance between the neurodivergent linguistic landscape of the poet's young son who's learning to play with words and his mother who is rapidly losing hers. Threaded through with entwined historical and ecological resonances, McCann assembles a thoughtful record of relationships to place and transcribes moments of unconventional and unexpected human connection, while attending to the non-human world of the forest as it shapes and carries social relations. In three poetic movements, Whatever Falls builds a testament to care and curiosity.

Review Quotes

"McCann demonstrates that the truth surrounds us all; our best way of connecting with it is through compassion and love. With equal parts exuberance and dread, the speaker encourages us to 'waste the whole day feeling these things.'"
-Nate Pritts, Boston Review

"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."
-Matthew Dickman, Tin House

About the Author

Anthony McCann is the author of five volumes of poetry including I am the dead, who, you take care of me (November 2023), and Thing Music (Wave Books, 2014). His non-fiction prose work, Shadowlands--on the 2016 armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge--was a finalist for the California Book Award and the Reading the West Award. Anthony is the current director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the California Institute of the Arts. He lives with his family in the Mojave Desert.