Description
Book SynopsisA TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
''One of the most erudite and inventive poets of our time'' Guardian
Shane McCrae, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary poetry, returns with The Many Hundreds of the Scent, an urgent new collection that brims with lyric force. He expands both the poetic and the personal mythologies that he has been constructing over the course of his career; in addition to introducing his readers to ''the thin king / who eats the world,'' McCrae invites them to bear witness to his tangle of childhood memories. In brutal, sorrowful lines, he recounts being kidnapped by his white supremacist maternal grandparents from his Black father as a boy. ''O reader, listener, stay,'' McCrae writes. ''You are now evidence.''
In The Many Hundreds of the Scent, Homeric figures mingle with those that populate the poet''s world. Helen weighs Paris''s spear in her hand and bloodies a raging Achilles; Penel
Trade Review
'In McCrae's hands, words are like tea leaves he will steep until every scent and flavour is extracted... This poet cannot be paraphrased; he must be read' * Guardian, Poetry Books of the Month *
