American noise

by Campbell McGrath

American Noise is a rapturous exploration of American culture and landscape. With compassionate wit and insight, Campbell McGrath transports us on a journey through contemporary society, transforming the commonplace into scenes of profound revelation. From late-night bars to early-morning diners, suburban malls to the Mojave Desert, McGrath's meticulously detailed vision defines singular moments of joy and melancholy in familiar local images: "Buick Electras rusting in the freight meadow;" "sprinklers whirling like tireless apostles;" "glaciers and missile silos,/grey whales and cheese dogs;" "autumn maples and distant music and smokestacks/wreathed in fog.". Reaching beyond the rhythms and texture of the "real" America, these poems discover the secret purgatory of the lost pop-culture icons of the post-Baby Boom generation - "an eternal Las Vegas of the soul." McGrath's elegiac vision encompasses Elvis and Jack Kerouac, Marilyn Monroe and Jimi Hendrix, Sylvia Plath and Speed Racer. In