Rank
“Rank has dark fumes, but it’s rich as loam, with a propulsive power inside: the thorny terror that ends in a scarlet flower. McCollough’s tight verses crackle and chime—sonically rich and lexically wild—their syllables so deeply cast you can almost hear other syllables in them, worlds within worlds. Bones clacking and muscles moaning, their physicality makes meaning audible, and the pain becomes prayerful, ‘a rendition of, at least, eternity.’”—Aaron Shurin
“McCollough’s poems in Rank, as in most of his collections, come from the inner part of himself that is a cosmic being. He tunes into the cosmos and receives it, which is what being alive is: ‘I could kill for the songs, I could.’ Poetry comes from this ongoing inner state of being, between listening to the cosmos and responding to it. McCollough’s vision of eternity and our verdant patch of it is at once practical and mysterious. At some point while reading these poems, you’ll think of listening to the song ‘Nothing but Flowers’ by the Talking Heads. Strumming a guitar makes a flower bloom. The corporeal world is rank, grows over, around, above, inside, and without us. Let the universe in and change you.”— Arda Collins
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