What I'm Looking For

'This is surprising, addictive poetry with delicious, seemingly wayward lines . . . McLane is a true Romantic, rooted in tradition while leaping and exulting in her originality' Irish Times Gathering the best of her first five collections, a 'sexy, cerebral and romantic' introduction to one of the US's most singular and charismatic poets Loose-limbed, freewheeling and conversational yet musically taut, Maureen N. McLane's poetry has been described as having 'a tonal register somewhere between teenage fangirl and Wordsworth professor' (London Review of Books). What I'm Looking For gathers selections from her first five books of poetry, from the mixture of love poems and breezy skewerings of Great Literature that characterize her debut, Same Life, to the later collections' shadowing of a mind roaming wittily through nature, philosophy, music and sex, and the bravura life-story-in-episodes of Mz N: the serial. Brainy, funny, passionate, uncool and always utterly charming, these 'sexy, cerebral and romantic' poems (The New York Times Book Review) will make you 'laugh, cry and think in quick succession, or all at once' (Sarah Howe).