Here All Night

by Jill McDonough

Overview

Jill McDonough’s latest collection is fiercely unapologetic, transforming mundane moments into witty and provocative insights that closely examine the flaws in our quick-moving society. Using dark humor, the poems address the impermanence of life and how we should always find reasons to re-evaluate ourselves as empathetic beings over our selfish tendencies.

”Here’s Jill McDonough, Here All Night, belting out an endearing song of herself that is, as Whitman’s is, tuned in to some thrumming undercurrent of joy in all the mess that is America. The poems’ catalogue of the unwieldy stuff of domestic life ultimately insists that things are pretty good—love endures, friends come through, there’s plenty of gin. Unabashed and boisterous, McDonough’s voice also coos with gratitude and aching tenderness. A vital book in multiple senses: read it and feel more alive.” —Maggie Dietz

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948579025
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	09/17/2019
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Jill McDonough is the author of Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), and Reaper (Alice James, 2017). The recipient of three Pushcart prizes and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry. She teaches in the MFA program at UMass-Boston. Her fifth poetry collection, Here All Night, is forthcoming from Alice James Books.

Table of Contents

I

Do What You Love 3

Ming 4

Fawn Bleat 6

Still Falling 7

Lundi Gras at Commander's Palace 8

What the Boyfriends Teach Us 9

But Yet 10

Casual Sleep 11

That's My Taco: A Villanelle for Jim Rockford 12

Whitey Bulges 13

I Don't Know Greek 14

It's What You Said You Wanted 15

I Said- 16

The HPV Sonnets 17

For I Will Consider My Friend Susan 18

This Next Poem 19

Hot Dogs, Fresh Buns: Tetrameter for Dre 20

Shore Leave, South Boston 21

Happy 22

Tuesday Morning 23

II

Also, Homemade Flamethrowers 27

Enchantment 28

I Think You Will Be Able to Hug Her 29

Cindy Comes to Hear Me Read 30

On Faculty Meetings 31

Emily Dickinson, Amazonian Canoes 32

I Dream of God in Oxford 34

My Body Is a Temple 35

Another Art 36

Woman Comes into the Bar 37

The Women in the Shoe Store Ads Are All in Love with Each Other but Not Really They Are in Love with Shoes Thousands of Shoes 38

Two White Women Walk into a Bank 39

ROOM FOR PARTY 40

In Which I Am Accused of Sleeping My Way to the Top 41

Shifting Faith 42

Sewn Stripes, Embroidered Stars 43

Sonnet for the Money 44

III

Poor Pussy 47

Gay Freaking Assholes: On Tolerance 48

Sealing Woodrow 49

Perfect Happiness 50

Our Father 51

Satan's Cupboard 52

Man's Man 54

Late Leeks 55

Josey Packs a Box 56

Gin and Tonic, Citrus, Jiffy Pop 57

Dr. Li Shovels! 58

Bruegel 59

The Whole House Looked Better When Godfrey Was in It 60

Ferris Wheel's a Ship 61

Eight of Wands 62

What's New 63

Editorial Reviews

"[McDonough is] a poet who moves between the rough-edged, throaty way we speak, and who elevates the language so that we’re more awake to the beauty, absurdity, and possibility in this world—and our short time in it."
—The Boston Globe

“Once again, with immense foresight and lyricism, Jill McDonough proves herself a master of American vernacular. A superb conversationalist, a humanist, she shapes our foibles and triumphs into artful speech that is memorable for its celebration and embrace of humanity. In classrooms, in bars, in cities, Here All Night amplifies the cadences and edges of contemporary life as reported by one of its most gifted poets.”
—Major Jackson

“When you pick up a new book of poems that can make you laugh—snort, really—and weep on any page, you know you’ve struck gold. Assurance, bravura, empathic vulnerability—and a moral urgency—are at the heart of Jill McDonough’s work, in the Ming vase falling forever in rhymed couplets in a museum stairwell, in her poetry-student prisoners, in her wondrous joy in the love of her life, Josey. McDonough’s in-your-face lyrical voice—bumptious, lyrical, defiant, effervescent, refusing to be heartbroken—quakes at nothing, takes on anything (who else would dare Elizabeth Bishop’s classic poem on loss, ‘One Art,’ as McDonough does in ‘The Art of Finding’?) Her embrace is generous, and irreverent. Just when you couldn’t be blamed for thinking nothing’s sacred, Here All Night, reminds you anything could be.”
—Gail Mazur

From the Publisher