Thus, in seven lines, McCartney breaks down the self’s relation to the universe. Her lack of shame has allowed her to gauge the true nature of her limited responsibility toward what she cannot change. Another might have been tempted to bemoan her helplessness in witnessing this tragic scene, but McCartney sees it for what it actually is; while she is cognizant of the scene’s intensity, she goes ahead and skips the bemoaning part. Instead, she takes comfort in the fact that she need not feel responsible for “that much pain,” which can only be the doing of something far beyond her realm of influence.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of realization that must be constantly renewed if one is to go on engaging with the world and its discontents, and especially if one is to engage as intensely as does McCartney. So the confrontation with engagement rages on, and in McCartney’s world the heavy fighting is concentrated in love, sex and marriage. Of a dying cat, McCartney writes, “Say it: nothing will restore/ her health. And yet, remark her purr, her carriage,/ how she embodies our marriage.” The dying marriage referred to there haunts this book, taking it over slowly like a snake squeezing drugged prey. Eventually, the failure of a 20-year marriage is brought to mind by a dog sprayed by a skunk, an incident that finds the speaker “spitting,/ throat constricting, betrayal’s rot lingering long past love.”
Even for the tough-minded McCartney, the failure of a marriage—in addition to the few other failed flings that are alluded to—is tough to swallow. In “Against Marriage,” she describes the post-marriage situation: “Days/ dribbled in goblets of bitterness: how stupid/ I was, how little it matters, craving that liquor.” Meanwhile, in “Crux” the speaker claims that, in the aftermath of her marriage, “I’m not angry, just a bit crushed.” But, again, this is no reason to complain, or as that line concludes, it’s just “my problem,” as opposed to anything the reader should feel bad about. It may come off as incidental or tacked on, but it is that ownership of her problem that allows the speaker to persevere through what has been a very difficult time. Because she does this not by avoiding her pain but by confronting it head-on, she can still allow herself to relish what she never wanted to let go, as in “For Pigeon Lake:”
I can almost smell the dryness
of those times, the beauty and tension, crickets and jackdaws,
the cool lake percolating at the edge of the brow beaten lawn.
Happy just to be with you.
A similar sentiment accompanies the speaker’s memory of more booze-filled days, with “a cold pint on a hot deck, chocolate stout from Quebec, windowless/ taverns, banquettes and bartenders… I miss all that.” She misses it, but she has also let it go, “loving/ it as I do, sincerely, from a smaller house down the road.”
You can imagine this whole collection was written from that house, with the poet conjuring hard, important memories until she knew every crack they’d formed in her psyche, then filling those cracks until the foundation stabilized and she could once again remember past the pain to the beauty for which she risked that pain at all. It is a small marvel, as a reader, to watch this process play out, especially given McCartney’s lyrical mastery, which is never heavy-handed—is in fact very low-key—but is nonetheless sneakily gorgeous. Take the first line from “Against Sanitation:” “Antiseptic dichromatic funereal smell of floral bleach.” Just a great line. Or the final lines from “Crux:”
This completely sucks, but I don’t hate you.
It’s self-disgust. The years in which I chose
not to see, disbelieving distance, indifference.
Time to shift gears, let out the clutch.
Notice how the “U” organizes the sound in this quatrain, the short clauses highlight rhythmic cadences (“this completely sucks”=”let out the clutch”) and how she allows the “D’s” to cluster in the middle lines. This is gritty confessionalism, but with the lyrical chops—and the wisdom—to raise the poems to a rarified air at the same time that they stay firmly planted in the ground.
For and Against is a confessional collection of the finest caliber. It is as raw as it gets, but it never allows itself to be trapped in its own drama. McCartney has written a book that is wholly internally driven, but with a core hard enough to withstand a total embrace of pain while producing lyrical gems to make any poet jealous. These poems are not “for” anything—detachment, love, pain, passion, etc.—sometimes and “against” it other times. They are both “for and against” all of these things all of the time, simultaneously. McCartney has revealed our deepest and most difficult contradictions with humbleness, grace courage. That is no small feat.
Thank you for your careful and intelligent review of my book. I want to point out, that not all readers will be as well-read as you, and without that little story at the beginning, they would have no idea who I am talking about! Rosemary