An astonishing new collection from one of our finest emerging poets
A shark's tooth, the shape-shifting cloud drifting from a smokestack, the smoke detectors that hang, ominous but disregarded, overhead, very little escapes the watchful eye of Joshua Mehigan. The poems in Accepting the Disaster range from lyric miniatures like "The Crossroads," a six-line sketch of an accident scene, to "The Orange Bottle," an expansive narrative page-turner whose main character suffers a psychotic episode after quitting medication. Mehigan blends the naturalistic milieu of such great chroniclers of American life as Stephen Crane and Studs Terkel with the cinematic menace and wonder of Fritz Lang. Balanced by the music of his verse, this unusual combination brings an eerie resonance to the real lives and institutions it evokes.
These poems capture with equal tact the sinister quiet of a deserted Main Street, the tragic grandiosity of Michael Jackson, the loneliness of a self-loathing professor, the din of a cement factory, and the saving grandeur of the natural world. This much-anticipated second collection is the work of a nearly unrivaled craftsman, whose first book was called by Poetry "a work of some poise and finish, by turns delicate and robust."
"Mehigan is one of America's most gifted formalists, and as his title indicates, his sensibility is not a sunny one--rarely have so many people bought the farm in iambic pentameter. But this is an observation, not a criticism, and 'The Orange Bottle,' in particular, gives new life to tired compliment 'tour de force."
David Orr, The New York Times
"Joshua Mehigan is well known to readers who follow contemporary poets, but his Accepting the Disaster is the rare poetry book that could bring a lot of pleasure to a much broader audience. Although Mehigan is a master of formal elements, his poems also display a deep human understanding-of work, of small-town life, of mortality and suffering ? that makes them feel not just impressive but trustwor
Adam Kirsch, The New York Times Book Review
"The book I most looked forward to getting my hands on this year was Joshua Mehigan's second collection, Accepting the Disaster. This is, poem after poem, one of the best volumes of recent years. Comparisons have been made to Philip Larkin-Mehigan has a way with rhyme and meter, and his pessimism is as dark as industrial sludge. If deprivation was, for Larkin, what daffodils were for Wordsworth, f
