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 Total Balance Farm

Clint McCown's meditative locale is a menagerie of hawks and hummingbirds, eagles and turtles, a wife's idle boot and the brown recluse who'll find uneasy home in it. Through philosophers Greek and ruralist, McCown finds terror in beauty and beauty in the terrified ones adrift in earth's vertiginous sway. The poet leaves us always a step removed from steady, hankering for balance. There, tethered in fear's "inmost cave," menace and penance preside—all our human "complaints" loom amid the uncertain gift of "feathers."

–Kevin Stein, Poet Laureate of Illinois and author of American Ghost Roses

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, author of Your Moon

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, author of Mayakovsky’s Revolver

I read Total Balance Farm with real pleasure. This is a fine book steeped in hard work and even harder questions. Using precise depictions of the natural world and honest portrayals of human ambition, 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; that ear, coupled with his rich narrative gifts and his keen wit, make for an engaging, artful, greatly rewarding experience.

–Mark Cox, author of Natural Causes

About the Author

Clint McCown has published four novels (The Member-Guest, War Memorials, The Weatherman, and Haints), and four previous volumes of poems (Labyrinthiad, Sidetracks, Wind Over Water, and Dead Languages). He has received the Midwest Book Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, the S. Mariella Gable Prize, the Germaine Breé Book Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers designation, and a Distinction in Literature citation from the Wisconsin Library Association. He is the only two-time recipient of the American Fiction Prize. In journalism, he received an Associated Press Award for Documentary Excellence for his investigations of organized crime. He has worked as a screenwriter for Warner Bros. and a Creative Consultant for HBO television. He is a former principal actor with the National Shakespeare Company, and several of his plays have been produced. He has edited a number of literary journals, including the Beloit Fiction Journal, which he founded in 1984. He teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the low-residency MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.