Its Day Being Gone

Its Day Being Gone

Rose Mclarney

Penguin Books

I’m still here. I can’t stay away from the hard images. - Facing North

Rose McLarney’s poems speak of the fragility of the land and of its resilience. They tell of the strength and vulnerability of its inhabitants. These are the hard images of which she speaks in the lead poem of her striking new collection.

Her poem “Imminent Domain” begins with the image of South American women who won’t leave their land to make room for a hydroelectric dam, and then compares them to the Appalachian families evicted to make room for Fontana Dam, and the many reservoirs of the Tennessee Valley. She tells of how she “…swam over houses in Carolina,” in a voice worthy to speak for people dispossessed. She ends by saying how she too felt the urge to control flowing water and built dams of her own as a child, This poem is typical because McLarney can’t stop her poems with one insight, she gives us the whole picture in words and images which made this, her second book, a prize winner in the National Poetry Series and earned publication by a major house. Each poem tells a story of life on the land, filled with struggles, yet well lived.

A full list of publications which have featured McLarney’s poems is not possible here, but Kenyon Review, New England Review, Slate, Orion, and the Missouri Review are among her noteworthy publication credits. For her first book, The Always Broken Plates of Mountains, she received the George Garrett New Writing Award given by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. As a result of receiving the award, she read from her book at the Celebration of Southern Literature in Chattanooga. At this reading she startled the audience with her presence, the clarity of her vision, and the lyric beauty of her poems. The new book, Its Day Being Gone, is better yet.