Two Appearances After the Resurrection
Will be published approx. on 27. March 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
56 pages
978-1-63243-172-1 (ISBN)
Description
McCrae's latest collection considers the nature of perception and experiments with form and punctuation.
This is a book about perceiving and being perceived. The various subjects of these poems are viewed by an artist, a devil, a soul floating out of a body it had inhabited, a god fed up with her husband's infidelities, and a father whose young child has COVID-19. The poems of Two Appearances After the Resurrection are haunted by the question of what one ought to do with their perceivability.
After a decade of publishing poems almost exclusively utilizing no punctuation aside from the slash, Shane McCrae began including semi-regular punctuation in his 2023 book, The Many Hundreds of the Scent. He continues that project in Two Appearances After the Resurrection. Here, he further explores the consequences-especially the rhythmical consequences-of the change. Throughout these poems, McCrae perceives and implicitly considers his own shifting approaches to writing.
This is a book about perceiving and being perceived. The various subjects of these poems are viewed by an artist, a devil, a soul floating out of a body it had inhabited, a god fed up with her husband's infidelities, and a father whose young child has COVID-19. The poems of Two Appearances After the Resurrection are haunted by the question of what one ought to do with their perceivability.
After a decade of publishing poems almost exclusively utilizing no punctuation aside from the slash, Shane McCrae began including semi-regular punctuation in his 2023 book, The Many Hundreds of the Scent. He continues that project in Two Appearances After the Resurrection. Here, he further explores the consequences-especially the rhythmical consequences-of the change. Throughout these poems, McCrae perceives and implicitly considers his own shifting approaches to writing.
Reviews / Votes
"Jesus remained mysterious to the disciples when he drifted briefly among them after his death. McCrae's poems honor mystery by testing appearances-the black man seen from three angles by the artist Toyin Ojih Odutola, or 'light hypnotized from water,' or police horses. The dead and the living struggle to commune in these intricately crafted poems: marvels of attunement, holding harmony and dissonance, forgiveness and pain, all in the same lines. The sacred is hard to see, here on earth. But McCrae makes it visible."-- Rosanna Warren, author of "Hindsight" "McCrae's poems of disquiet dazzle with their tenderness and precision as they explore 'life outliving life' in a landscape of violence and erasure. Autobiography hovers at the edges of these verses, made rigorous by history and art, given clamor by McCrae's unmistakable music. Two Appearances After the Resurrection, his marvelous new collection, is mournful and defiant and fierce in every way."
-- Richie Hofmann, author of "The Bronze Arms"
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Richmond, CA
United States
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 8 mm
Weight
86 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-63243-172-1 (9781632431721)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Shane McCrae is the author of poetry collections including New and Collected Hell and The Many Hundreds of the Scent and a memoir, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun. McCrae has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.