Scared Violent Like Horses: Poems by John McCarthy (English) Paperback Book

Description: Scared Violent Like Horses by John McCarthy "A stunning overlap of a lost boy and lost landscape through the lens of a gifted poets magical linguistic and storytelling abilities." -VICTORIA CHANG FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Selected by Victoria Chang as winner of the Jake Adam York Prize, John McCarthysScared Violent Like Horsesis a deeply personal examination of violent masculinity, driven by a yearning for more compassionate ways of being.McCarthys flyover country is populated by a family strangled by silence: a father drunk and mute in the passenger seat, a mother sinking into bed like a dish at the bottom of a sink, and a boy whose friends play punch-for-punch for fun. He shows us a boy struggling to understand pain carried down through generations and how quickly abandonment becomes a silent kind of violence; "how we deny each other, daily, so many chances to care," and how "we didnt know how to talk about loss, / so we made each other lose." Constant throughout is the brutality of the Midwestern landscape that, like the people who inhabit it, turns out to be beautiful in its vulnerability: sedgegrass littered with plastic bags floating like ghosts, dilapidated houses with abandoned Fisher Price toys in the yard, and silos of dirt and rust under a sky that struggles to remember the ground below.With arresting lyricism and humility,Scared Violent Like Horsesattends to the insecurities that hide at the heart of whats been turned harsh, offering a smoldering but redemptive and tender view of the lost, looked over, and forgotten. Author Biography John McCarthy is the author of one previous collection, Ghost Country, which was named a Best Poetry Book of 2016 by the Chicago Review of Books. McCarthy is the 2016 winner of The Pinch Literary Award in Poetry, and his work has appeared in Best New Poets 2015, Haydens Ferry Review, Passages North, Sycamore Review, Zone 3, and in anthologies such as New Poetry from the Midwest 2017. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and serves as an editor of RHINO magazine and the Quiddity international literary journal and public radio program. Table of Contents Contents Switchgrass I. Hymn Pie Tins behind Porch Lights Portrait of the Only Child with Tire Swing Self-Portrait as Stolen Bike North End I As If the Shirt Were Standing up Straight, Hand Raised Hunger Word Problem Cremation Noise Falling Backward North End II Callousing Self-Portrait as Home Run Ball The Scarecrows Reflection Is an Only Child Bloodmeal Little Ticks of Blood and the Taste of Dead Leaves Until I Learn That Please Is the Color of a Bruise North End III Vandalism II. Flyover Country I. [If You Stay Long Enough] II. [Of Motherhood, a Fierce Drowning] III. [Long Day of the Factory Belt] IV. [The Taste of Copper] V. [To Sever Anything] VI. [To Riven Stillness] VII. [Renders and Yields] III. Scared Violent Like Horses The Decapitation of Paul Bunyan Thin Napkins Sprinkled with Salt North End IV Last Rites Self-Portrait as Psychiatric Ward Definitions of Body Our Mother Stolen in a Pothole North End V Baptism Daguerreotype Confirmation North End VI What I Mean When I Say I Dont Box Anymore A Brief History of Friends On Fighting Love is Like a Horse Set on Fire from the Inside Wild Vision of What Is Real Sometimes I Call the Damage Healing And Other Acts of Mercy Upon Learning That Years Later the World Did Not End, I Was Finally Able to Talk about the Wild Horses Guide and Guard Us Far and Near Notes Acknowledgments Review Praise for Scared Violent Like Horses McCarthys book of Midwestern threnodies begins in image and ends in solemnity . . . McCarthys poems are profluent stories--a joy to marvel at this skill, impressive considering the books bleak landscape.--The Millions "McCarthy has whittled out a sense of freedom from the heartache of the past, and the reader is left with a remarkable vision."--Booklist In unshowy, plaintive, quietly delivered language that should not be mistaken for affectless--and that can be stabbed through with surprisingly piercing metaphor--McCarthy vivifies a place and hard way of life too little visited. --Library Journal "Scared Violent Like Horses is the story of a lost boy with a quiet ache--a story about a boy and a young man who grows up amid the landscape of a vast yet specific Midwest filled with switchgrass, scarecrows, dead leaves, dirt, factories, and family and childhood people. Its the people the speaker is really writing about--the speakers connection and disconnection with those who populate the landscape and the feeling of being different or not fully belonging. John McCarthys impulse is narrative but this impulse is struck by the lightning of his linguistic powers, as in the poem, Switchgrass A mangled cat mats the crankshaft and fan belt, / fur-shredded and soaked. Unusual images and figurative language are in abundance: The cornfields tassels are wicks burning toward the sky and the fields / are sutured by utility poles marching like a procession of crosses . . . Ultimately, what the reader is left with is a stunning overlap of lost boy and lost landscape glimpsed through the lens of a gifted poets magical linguistic and storytelling abilities."--Victoria Chang "Scared Violent Like Horses is a book that grabs the reader with its insistent lyric beauty. Its a book where its speaker is haunted by the empty violence and despair of a Midwestern landscape full of "smolder and silence." Its a landscape usually underestimated and derided--the "flyover country" of condescending editorials and talk show chatter. But in the hands of this poet, these hardscrabble landscapes, these haunts of hurt and hurting families and friends who show love through their thrown punches--these scenes become so relentlessly beautiful that a reader cannot look away. John McCarthys poems have had their hold on me for a long time, and I defy anyone who reads this book not to walk away shaken, stirred, and ultimately, utterly changed." --Allison Joseph "Throbbing with the quiet ache of the flown-over, John McCarthys extraordinary perception and lingual deftness unveil the grit and humble grandeur of Springfields north end. Rural Illinoiss emotional brutality is rendered raw as we see into and through a young man reaching beyond the debris of a violent and damaged lineage, in search of a gentler, less destructive self."--Matt Rasmussen "In this devastating, gorgeous collection, John McCarthy opens up [t]he hurt and mangled parts of us, the places in us where we are hollering fervent and raw, to explore the pain of abandonment and the purity of that loneliness, so that we might understand how trauma breeds desolation. How could we not / break the mirror we look at in the morning? How do we escape the desolation we are? I carved my scalp open, he writes, until I could feel the smoke leaving my body, and such viscerally brutal moments in this book remind us that there are many different kinds of beauty. McCarthy is a master of transforming his world into every kind."--Sara Eliza Johnson Praise for Ghost Country "A love letter to the Midwest, John McCarthy . . . paints a familiar, blue-collar picture of the Midwest but with a dose of surrealism that enlivens the region and gives it dynamic force in his storytelling." --Chicago Review of Books "In John McCarthys arresting debut, the middle of America reveals itself to be a belly full of opportunities and frustrations." --Adrian Matejka "In these gritty poems, McCarthy exposes a grimmer reality tainted by drugs, alcohol, poverty, and violence. This is a hardscrabble life where time stretches past into the future, back into the past, and all seems predetermined to remain the same. McCarthys poems pay close attention to a darker middle life, and they do not flinch." --Sandy Longhorn "In this stunning debut, John McCarthy illuminates this complexity and curiosity of life in so-called flyover country. The poems in Ghost Country move fiercely between violence and love with equal measure and means. This is a book that never stops opening up." --Adam Clay "The way McCarthy imagines and executes these lyric Midwestern narratives renders the place both familiar and strange, humdrum and ethereal. McCarthy has the craft and vision of someone whos been at this for a very long time." --Chad Simpson "The poems of Ghost Country are about desperate situations and places we know. Verbal fights in pick-up trucks, a high school homecoming, and an alcoholic preacher all populate this memorable book . . .To borrow some of the authors language, Ghost County throbs with anger. What these poems reveal is the beauty of those things we might find commonplace now. McCarthy shines a spotlight on the familiar and glossed over." --Curbside Books & Records Review Quote Praise for Scared Violent Like Horses "Scared Violent Like Horses is the story of a lost boy with a quiet ache--a story about a boy and a young man who grows up amid the landscape of a vast yet specific Midwest filled with switchgrass, scarecrows, dead leaves, dirt, factories, and family and childhood people. Its the people the speaker is really writing about--the speakers connection and disconnection with those who populate the landscape and the feeling of being different or not fully belonging. McCarthys impulse is narrative but this impulse is struck by the lightning of his linguistic powers, as in the poem, Switchgrass: A mangled cat mats the crankshaft and fan belt, / fur-shredded and soaked. Unusual images and figurative language are in abundance: The cornfields tassels are wicks burning toward the sky and the fields / are sutured by utility poles marching like a procession of crosses . . . Ultimately, what the reader is left with is a stunning overlap of lost boy and lost landscape glimpsed through the lens of a gifted poets magical linguistic and storytelling abilities." --Victoria Chang "Scared Violent Like Horses is a book that grabs the reader with its insistent lyric beauty. Its a book where its speaker is haunted by the empty violence and despair of a Midwestern landscape full of "smolder and silence." Its a landscape usually underestimated and derided--the "flyover country" of condescending editorials and talk show chatter. But in the hands of this poet, these hardscrabble landscapes, these haunts of hurt and hurting families and friends who show love through their thrown punches--these scenes become so relentlessly beautiful that a reader cannot look away. John McCarthys poems have had their hold on me for a long time, and I defy anyone who reads this book not to walk away shaken, stirred, and ultimately, utterly changed." --Allison Joseph "Throbbing with the quiet ache of the flown-over, McCarthys extraordinary perception and lingual deftness unveil the grit and humble grandeur of Springfields north end. Rural Illinois emotional brutality is rendered raw as we see into and through a young man reaching beyond the debris of a violent and damaged lineage, in search of a gentler, less destructive self." --Matt Rasmussen Praise for Ghost Country "A love letter to the Midwest, John McCarthy . . . paints a familiar, blue-collar picture of the Midwest but with a dose of surrealism that enlivens the region and gives it dynamic force in his storytelling." --Chicago Review of Books "In John McCarthys arresting debut, the middle of America reveals itself to be a belly full of opportunities and frustrations." --Adrian Matejka "In these gritty poems, McCarthy exposes a grimmer reality tainted by drugs, alcohol, poverty, and violence. This is a hardscrabble life where time stretches past into the future, back into the past, and all seems predetermined to remain the same. McCarthys poems pay close attention to a darker middle life, and they do not flinch." --Sandy Longhorn "In this stunning debut, John McCarthy illuminates this complexity and curiosity of life in so-called flyover country. The poems in Ghost Country move fiercely between violence and love with equal measure and means. This is a book that never stops opening up." --Adam Clay "The way McCarthy imagines and executes these lyric Midwestern narratives renders the place both familiar and strange, humdrum and ethereal. McCarthy has the craft and vision of someone whos been at this for a very long time." --Chad Simpson "The poems of Ghost Country are about desperate situations and places we know. Verbal fights in pick-up trucks, a high school homecoming, and an alcoholic preacher all populate this memorable book . . .To borrow some of the authors language, Ghost County throbs with anger. What these poems reveal is the beauty of those things we might find commonplace now. McCarthy shines a spotlight on the familiar and glossed over." --Curbside Books & Records Excerpt from Book Switchgrass This is the year of this is never over. Its raining and it will not stop raining. Outside Springfield, roads move like spilled water. Silos of dirt and rust surround the bones of barn lofts with shingles shucked like broken stalks. Crabapple trees lose their fruit and fall from rot into wild clover. In the straight lines of cut lawns--the hay-thick scent of Illinois. Plowed hillsides pierced by stenciled signs beg me to pray to God. The switchgrass bends to the shoulder of the road, pushing the wind through the gravel. The switchgrass sways and sways. It will not stop swaying. Im floating away from home. Im becoming a prayer I never said for myself. There is smolder and silence when my pickup truck goes quiet and smoke rises from the engine. Parked slanted on the roads shoulder, it takes a few tries with wet fingers to prop the hood. A mangled cat mats the crankshaft and fan belt, fur-shredded and soaked. He must have wanted warmth from the storm when my truck was a box of rust resting crooked on my lawn, miles ago. His black eyes are rolled back. His tongue is out and his throat is ripped open, exposing muscle. I never even heard his scream, piston-stretched and hot. I want to shake him back to life, but I feel so far away. Its raining and it will not stop raining. Switchgrass quivers in every direction. Its raining, and I dont have anywhere to leave. *** Hymn The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mothers call. --Brigit Pegeen Kelly I was a lost boy with a quiet ache, so quiet it was like listening to a spider weave a web around a cotton ball in early autumn. The temperature dropped. The trees breathed please with their long breaths. My throat grew raw and thick in the scratched open light of morning when I woke nervous and cold. I found my naked feet bare and the bed covers fallen from the bed with the fan left on. My mother was still gone like good sleep. Ive never had a conversation with my mother about our lost days or anything other than how Im cold. She cant have a conversation because her geography is mapped with a landscape of broken light bulbs and brown leaves and dirty snow that is so dirty it looks like the variegated feathers of a lost boy with lost wings. And that boy remembers his mother singing hallelujah in church, and I remember being at church the whole time wanting to be in the trees, hiding and feeling the trees breathing please against my cold skin- please . All the while, my father sits in a checkered lawn chair, even when its cold outside, with a small radio listening to baseball scores recount the losses of men who have lost their whole lives swinging at a ball. That ball is sometimes a bird that a boy reaches for as the bird edges the sky. My father rubs his hands on his knees and yells, and Im yelling in the trees about missing everything that I have lost-a song I once heard at church that goes Lady, help the absent loved ones. How we miss their presence here. May the hand of thy protection, guide and guard them far and near. I dont know how it goes anymore. The air is plain like the color of my forearm, and Im sitting in a childrens swimming pool that has deflated to a swarming puddle of mosquitoes. It is scum-thick, and Im trying to sing help the absent , but Im a lost boy who cant remember that lost song, that cant remember how to sing his hallelujah , so I sit scratching the red bites on my legs until they bleed. *** Until I Learn That Please Is the Color of a Bruise Made from his hands, Chris aims a gun at me. Youre dead , he says. But I dont like being the dead one, so I take off running. The chasing lasts a long time. We snag our sleeves on the tops of chain-link cyclone fences until the chasing becomes a way to see how far we can explore. Climb and run, climb and run, the unbraiding of back alleys and empty lots until we end up on an acreage of private property with our own privacy and no one else around. Chris corners me under an old lean-to where a sun-damaged cigarette boat is living out the rest of its existence on top of an old hitch-trailer. Here, Chris forces me to play punch-for-punch until I beg Please stop . Until I learn that please is the color of a bruise, skin swollen and purple on the side of my throbbing arm. Everything is swollen when it starts raining. We roll our pant legs up and walk home through the wet grass. My soaked shoes, as I walk, are like a feeling knotting up inside my stomach that I cant explain. This is how you stay friends when youre poor , Chris says. Our whole summer was like this-- when we couldnt see that far into the future, every day was the same. It was nice, the way we could handle a little bit of pain and return to it again, day after day. *** Flyover Country III. [Long Day of the Factory Belt] And what of my father who lost his father at nine? Everyday after he threw a baseball at a church wall across the street from the only apartment he ever knew, playing basketball on the sloped hill of a parking lot with other lost kids on the north end, until he moved in with my mother in the only place she ever knew, and together, the two of them compared the only geographies they believed in. When he thinks of this, his face reminds me of a barns haymow rotting away, insulated with owl nests and mice skulls. This was his descent into the incinerating pleasure of normalcy- work and bars, work and bars-long days of the factory belt hangover. How many days has he risen and questioned the different versions of himself pinned to clotheslines where the wind flattened, smoothed, and beat out the wrinkles? I believe it was hard for him to reach into a closet too small to contain the dreams that went missing and pull out a routinely painful, uniformed version of himself, like removing an arm from a bush, finding it scratched by thistle and covered in cockleburs he pretends dont hurt. When I look into the landscape behind his eyes, I believe it was too much for him to sludge everyday through the sedgegrass shadowed with sycamores and elms, where littered white plastic bags floated through like ghosts, snagging on felled branches-yes, his eyes grew to look like this. It took me a long time to accept this, but his wife is asleep in a bed that is falling into the ground, and I will never understand his fear. Compassion is awareness of the ineffability of anothers fear--its different shades, and there is honor in the weathered crumpling of his face. *** Scared Violent Like Horses I was too young to call him a friend, but I had a classmate once who snuck up behind a horse and now his body is made of a long time ago. He is the quiet space in my memory where he never sat next to me again. Back then, everyone I ever called a friend held fire in their fists when they talked to me. Their fists were dingy, grime-covered, and grease-slick as if they were made of horsehair, as if they were untamed and lonely, galloping and wind-swollen. We didnt know how to talk about loss, so we made each other lose. We went to fields to see who could take the most damage. We went to fields that smelled like the boy who became an empty space on a Tuesday morning a long time ago. Now, because I am scared of time and how it moves, I look down at my fists that didnt always want to, but have hit so many friends that the broken knuckles look like bruised magnolias. Listen to me, Please , when I knock or bang on the table or door and beg for attention. Please, I dont know how to ask for forgiveness. I dont know how to let anything go. I dont know how to say anything else about the boy who had a buzz cut and a flat head, the boy who was kicked in the face by a horse and died looking up at the sky. The boys father must have found his son with a crushed face, and while running back to the house with his own son in his arms, must have said something raging and spiteful to God. This memory is my starting point when I think backwards and apologize for all of our fists coiled tight as key rings. How could we not break the mirror we look at in the morning? How could we not swing at the different versions of our faces staring back between the fissures? The hurt and mangled parts of us loved the blood dried brown on our skewbald knuckles, and we had nightmares of being reined in. We needed someone to help us change. We needed someone to force us into confronting the uselessness of our violence. But no one came, and our fists swelled unbridled and restless, wild and afraid. Description for Sales People Authors poems have been widely published in Best New Poets 2015, Copper Nickel, Sycamore Review, and New Poetry from the Midwest 2017 Blurbs from breakout poets include Victoria Chang (prize judge), Alison Joseph, Matt Rasmussen, and Sara Eliza Johnson Books engagement with toxic masculinity (and more compassionate alternatives), violence, and rural landscapes/flyover country provides opportunities for wider coverage and crossover into larger markets The 2018 (and inaugural) Jake Adam York Prize winner was Analicia Sotelos Virgin , which was reviewed in the New York Times , was featured on PBS NewsHour and NBC News, and went into a pre-publication second printing Details ISBN1571315071 Pages 104 Publisher Milkweed Editions Year 2019 ISBN-10 1571315071 ISBN-13 9781571315076 Short Title Scared Violent Like Horses Language English Format Paperback Subtitle Poems Imprint Milkweed Editions Place of Publication Minneapolis Country of Publication United States NZ Release Date 2019-05-02 US Release Date 2019-05-02 UK Release Date 2019-05-02 Publication Date 2019-05-02 Author John McCarthy DEWEY 811.6 Audience General AU Release Date 2019-06-24 Illustrations Illustrations We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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