Travelling Music Book

Colleen McElroy is back and better than ever. Fans of her earlier works--especially "What Madness Brought Me Here," McElroy's stellar collection of new and selected poems, 1968-1988--will doubtless be ecstatic over this latest book of poems, which takes travel writing to new heights. Based on her journeys, both physical and cerebral, "Travelling Music" eloquently showcases McElroy's grace, her unbending vision, and her sassiness, encrypted within language's lyrical sound. The first poem, "Under Skies with No Views," explains an experienced traveler's credo, wherein "all memory is dicey at the border," and the final frontier in adventure is to "let yourself wander off the page into sweet / sleep where you dream beautiful oceans / and water that desires nothing for itself." Her edgy humor permeates the poem "There's an Obi in the Dishwasher (and Other Useful Japanese Phrases)": "We are out here playing world travellers / with nothing between us and forever but English" in a zone where we "get lost every five minutes / regardless of our intentions." In "The End of Civilization As We Know It," McElroy laments the passing of "a time when the camera's whir and Tarzan's / yell filled the space," in a long lost locus of "Tarzan / in the orison of 78 rpm--Tarzan and everything / is bared." A daring date turns cool in "Eads Bridge Boogie Across the Mississippi" when the young people celebrating across state lines have to face going home: "trying to turn sober, and both of us, like Mama said: / looking like hell sued for murder." And, because this collection is vintage McElroy, her irony often turns sharp. She speaks of crows that fled the scene with "payment for a ghetto full of stolen / Brer Rabbits and Aunt Nancys, / Words you invented each night." She envisions the prairie past, "how wives swallow dry prairie grass / Eating like songs its madness." If you haven't yet met Colleen McElroy, this collection is a terrific place to start. --Susan SwartwoutRead More