Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

228 ◆ Crab Orchard Review
Book Reviews
of the chin, looks into the eyes, looks in,
says, I accept these things as gifts,
then, okay, you’re who I’m writing for,
far off, or near; who I’m here biting my lip
to be clear to. Yes, you. Yes, you.
—Reviewed by Elisabeth Meyer
McFee, Michael. Shinemaster. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon
University Press, 2006. 64 pages. $14.95.
One of the best qualities of Shinemaster, the follow-up volume for
2001 Roanoke-Chowan Award winner Michael McFee, is that it has
a little something for everyone. Shinemaster is a collection of poems
that demonstrates how mundane events can segue into universal,
timeless themes. “Spitwads,” “Belching,” “Skin,” “Kissing,” “Sneezing,”
“Vineswinging,” and “Tubs” are a few of the commonplace items and
occurrences from which McFee launches his poetry. McFee’s volume
surprises and rewards the reader at every turn; from formal facility to
theoretical savvy, McFee is a poet worth listening to.
In this postmodern, anarchic age, McFee’s formal attention is
particularly pleasing to see. While eschewing traditional form for the
greater part of Shinemaster, his structural care is nonetheless evident.
“The Tree Man,” for instance, is laid out in a series of couplets; laid
lengthwise like logs, the formal arrangement evokes the wooden
content well.
“The Culvert” is another example of McFee’s sensitivity to form.
This poem is about a boyish dare and rite-of-passage that reinforces
themes of risk, death, and birth upon which McFee continually riffs.
The young speaker crawls through a “putrid tube / whose diameter was
barely greater than your body.” McFee’s masterful touch is to emulate
the claustrophobic moment with seventeen equally constricted lines.
Without a stanza break, this poem effectively simulates the tight
quarters of its semantic content. Here, as in many of the other poems,
McFee opts for a single mark of punctuation at the end, a choice that
leaves the reader as breathless and hurried as the boy in the poem who
hauls his “filthy self back into reborn morning.”
In “Vineswinging,” McFee again relates a boyhood memory. Here,
however, the focus is not on the form. In the poem, the speaker and