Sample Poem

Eagle and Turtle

When the eagle drops the turtle
from a great height,
it knows what it’s doing.
That’s how it makes a living.
The turtle will land hard,
preferably on rocks,
and split apart, allowing
easy access to the meat.

But what what does the turtle
make of it all?
Falling from the sky
outstrips its understanding.
As far as any turtle knows,
gravity is harmless,
a slow pull toward lethargy,
a simple means of staying put.
Shell-shattering force
is a mystery of the afterlife,
a puzzle inherited by blood,
a secret text hidden among
the picked-over remains
of the fallen.

In that moment of release
does the turtle think
it’s free
to get on with its life?
Is it pleased by
the weightless downward rush,
relieved
to have slipped the grip

of whatever it was
that snatched it up
from its sunny slant of stone
on the warm bank
beside the water?

Is the last thing it feels
a surge of joy
as it accelerates
headlong toward
what it has known only
as the safety of its home?

And what if it somehow lives,
landing lightly
on a cushion of thick brush,
of slicing edgewise
back into the mossy pond?

What facts of the miraculous
can it pass along
to others of its kind
when there are no others
of its kind?
Experience speaks a language
all its own.
Survivors are both
blessed and cursed,
and have to live alone
with what they know.

Who among the ordinary
could believe in
talons from the sky,
the terrifying rapture
of being taken up,
the ecstasy of flight,
the freedom of the great fall,
the shock of reuniting
with the rising earth?

Who among the innocent
could comprehend
the darkness
of the turtle’s dream,
the one that now
casts its shadow
over all remaining
moments in the sun?

          from Total Balance Farm
          and The Dictionary of Unspellable Noises:  New & Selected Poems, 1975-2018

Praise for Clint McCown

Clint McCown is a casually cosmic poet... Nothing in the world is too large or too small for these disturbing epiphanies. Elemental forces are at work here. In the end, the fruits of this experience turn out to be persimmons from McCown’s native Tennessee: irresistible to the taste, but capable of puckering our blander assumptions.

—Philip Appleman

Clint McCown's new book of poetry delves into the unruly world of nature, not as a guide or simply as scenery, but with the steady gaze of the late John Haines. Here nature, family, and selfhood are not just talked about but explored and questioned.

—Matthew Dickman

Clint McCown keeps a wry eye on the universe and thereby keeps his sanity and ours. He is asking all or most of the big questions, which are still the right questions.

—Roger Mitchell

In this marvelous collection of poems by one of our very best storytellers, time slows like the light does at the end of the day. Nature drives a hard bargain. We milk a dead cow to save her newborn calf. No matter how deep the fence posts were set, the soil loosens. “Experience / speaks a language all its own.” Our mortality is everywhere. In contemplation, “we are the universe / asking itself a question.” And it’s a bitter truth, Clint McCown’s wisdom, his sweet wisdom.

—Ralph Angel

These poems perceptively consider our mysteries and our limitations. “Thinking is the only voice I own,” McCown writes, but he also sings with a rough and seasoned music.

—Mark Cox

The poems of Clint McCown are, at once, droll and heartbreaking.

—Baron Wormser

No easy truths here, but a fine tragic-comic balance between “misfortune and sheer grace.” Love of mystery and the many blindsiding forms of our undoing duke it out in these verbally adroit, quick-witted poems. “Breakage has its upside,” the poet says, and one sure sign of that is in the brilliance glinting through this book.

—Betsy Sholl

There is always a searching intelligence in his writing that eschews both cynicism and posturing, that is driven to assess the past, but refuses the easy blandishments of nostalgia or regret. It is refreshing... to encounter a poet of the Horatian tradition, one who seeks balance, lucidity, and above all a hard-won wisdom.

—David Wojahn