Optimism Blues: Poems Selected and New (Paperback or Softback)

Reviewers respond to Optimism Blues: Poems Selected and New:

The compact intensity of Michael McIrvin’s poems links him to the strongest vein of American modernist and postmodern poetry, but their philosophical fire is entirely McIrvin’s own and constitutes a unique contribution. His Dog may be the most forcefully developed metaphor since Ted Hughes’ Crow, but all his work shows an intensely illuminating focus on those moments when perception and metaphysics intersect. (William Doreski)

Michael McIrvin’s analysis of the modern American psyche is far beyond almost any other living US poet. His poems are among the best informed and most intelligent you’ll find. In fact, McIrvin’s vision quest and its resultant insights into the complexities of human nature and the natural world exceed what most poets can ever hope to achieve. (Leonard Cirino)

McIrvin’s voice leads us safely through his unique landscape; half myth, half to help us make sense of our loneliness and suffering. It is its honesty that distinguishes his poetry, that enables it to reach back in time and rescue us from ancient walls and distances. McIrvin’s power, clarity, and compassion assure Optimism Blues a secure place in American literature. (Simon Perchik)

The authentic voice of Western man remains Job’s. Michael McIrvin’s Optimism Blues is in that ancient tradition: petitioning, pleading, deploring, damning, praying. Author of one of the most brilliant, most needed essay collections in the past decade, Whither American Poetry, McIrvin pursues with painful integrity and philosophical and poetic passion the classic issues. He offers us poems that are the “infinite herd of his sorrows,” but poems that are also sexy and erotic and tender and funny. Poems that speak “Dios in the same breath as devastar.” Michael McIrvin is a poet who will not compromise his dark vision precisely because his dream is “the salvation of the world.” (Sharon Doubiago)