MENISCUS

In the middle of his life, Robert Lowell wrote “Memories of West Street and Lepke,” a poem that reflected on Lowell’s recurrent manias and included the lines “My manic statement.” This is Shane Neilson’s manic statement, arching backwards through his personal histories (rural, difficult) and then into the current scale of illness: how it prophecizes and destroys. But this is not a book solely given over to a state; Neilson gives most of the book over to love, how it moves him, the disaster of chasing it, and how it settles all the accounts in his life.

Shane Neilson: Shane Neilson is a physician whose first chapbook of poems, The Beaten-Down Elegies, was published in 2004 by Frog Hollow Press. In 2005 he edited Alden Nowlan and Illness, also with Frog Hollow. Subsequently, he has written a memoir, Call Me Doctor (Pottersfield Press, 2006), and Exterminate My Heart (Frog Hollow Press, 2008). His work has appeared in the Anthologies The New Canon (Vehicule Press, 2005) and In Fine Form (Polestar, 2005). Meniscus is his first trade book of poetry.