Review of..
Intersection of X and Y

by Ruth Moose, The Pilot (Southern Pines, NC)


“Tough Poems Will Leave You Changed” 

These are tough poems that wrestle your mind down to the ground and make it cry “Uncle.” Poems lean and strong and full of gristle. You will not walk away from any poem in The Intersection of X and Y unchanged. You will be splayed out flat in admiration and wonder. How does Rebecca McClanahan do so much with so few words? In one poem? Pull in the past without sentiment so it gleams like glass, lies naked and pure on the page? 

If, as Yeats said, sex and death are the only two subjects fit for poetry, then McClanahan cornered the market with The Intersection of X and Y. She writes of the death of a sibling, in this case an older sister, that haunts her childhood and even her adulthood, the death of a marriage, a near death experience and the joy of life after, the deaths of grandparents, death of a neighbor’s child, death of a neighbor’s relationship, of seeing mummies in European museums, Canopic jars and even “the papery husks the poem wriggles out of,” “the slave buried alive with her king, the discarded placenta.” These are masterful poems that let you know you are in the hands of someone who knows her craft, has finely honed it to shining perfection. Bravo!