Q-Drive and Other Poems by Micah Muldowney

Q-Drive and Other Poems by Micah Muldowney

$19.99

 

In dialogue with his Modernist forebears – Cummings and Williams, in particular – Muldowney’s carefully observed poems attend to the textures of language, while inviting us to see the world in its particularity through the eyes of the child-as-naturalist, the man-as-son, as spouse, and as father.

–Alba Newmann Holmes, Assistant Professor of English and Interim Director of the Writing Associates Program at Swarthmore College

 

Weeks after reading “Confessions,” a long, fragmented poem in which a man on the street approaches the narrator, begging forgiveness for murder, I am still haunted by his pleadings: “ ‘What do I do? Tell me . . . How am I forgiven hombre de Dios? Tell me!’ / I prop him up. ‘Save me hombre de Dios!’ He tugs my hand … Begs.” Muldowney’s halting, stumbling lines that weave in footnoted Spanish and English give even more pain to the scene: discomfort in being approached, the horror of the crimes committed, the uselessness of one man forgiving another for such violence. All the poems in Q-Drive are so crafted: Starting with pieces that evoke a country childhood, moving into a world-traveled adult, Micah Muldowney’s poems are rich in image and soaked in the varying languages of time and place. The characters in the narrative pieces are true and vibrant, lingering with you.

–Scott Russel Morris, Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Utah Asia Campus.

 

 

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Description

Q-Drive and Other Poems

by Micah Muldowney

$19.99, Full-length, paper

978-1-64662-815-5

2022

Through a focus on the particulars, Q-Drive investigates the complex interplay of influences that shape us as humans. Throughout the three ‘books’ of this collection, the poet explores how, willing or no, this accretion of influence make us who we are. Each one touches and shapes us in unpredictable and indelible ways, making sense of our world for us and helping us find our place in it. Q-drive focuses on the intimate and formative objects and incidents of childhood that build the backbone of how we see the world. Exquisite Corpse engages with the myriad voices we are exposed to as we grow up and move on– language, suffering, class, era, occupation, faith, culture, taste – and how each leaves us changed in its turn. Finally, In Western Voices, relationships, personality, and story collide against the backdrop of a strange-yet-familiar place, highlighting our fascination with the mundane mysteries we encounter at peripheries of our own experience.

Micah Muldowney is a poet and musicologist born and brought up in Philadelphia. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Descant, West Trade Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Soundboard, This Literary Magazine, and Polyphony Online.  After nearly a decade of working and studying in the intermountain west and abroad in Mexico, Micah returned to his native Philadelphia, where he lives with his wife, Erin, and three children. Q-Drive is his debut collection of poetry.

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