NIGHTFALL MARGINALIA

Maclay’s collection of poetry delves deeply into the sensual and the intimate.

The author presents a collection of prose poems—free verse that experiments with stanzas, punctuation, and space. In “Song of the Broken Dice,” the sensory-rich imagery is transporting: “then that the dust collected; then that I gave up making— / even trying to make—the bed; then that the dishes gathered / in the sink until they broke; then that there was no further point / in hiding.” “Enclave” evokes a lucid dream, beginning: “It’s as if you’re looking for a restaurant you’ve been to in a dream—across from the oldest building in town, which you’ve misconstrued as an inn (it’s really a Mission).” Many of the poems feel like a search for details inside of a feeling, memory, or dream. Rather than using linear narrative to frame and direct the verses, the speaker dances with the reader, inviting intimacy. Using multiple slashes in one line, the speaker in “Before Us” suggests: “An Armament / arm / armband tossed into the gray / the grim Corvette…” The poems often use alliteration, consonance, and assonance to evoke visceral feelings, as in “Beginner’s Daybook”: “The fugitive brightness of this ebony 8-ball / Corrals / corrects me in this summer suite, its suitcase of sulfur / a sulky rotisserie, sweet rotunda / The quest, begun, begs, begets this dance, flirtation, masking.” The poems are all adrift in suggestions and questions and satiny softness, even when the subject is hard or sharp, as in “Kairos at Night”: “It seems to be a hammer / until I pick it up— // on the asphalt, white on black: a broken racket, / at the rim, says Service.” The experimental line-spacing and punctuation might be distracting in some pieces, but they work beautifully in other poems. Certainly, the free form is in harmony with the verses’ ethereal content.

A body of poems evoking the textures of a soft and endless night.