{"id":15092,"date":"2018-12-01T01:20:26","date_gmt":"2018-12-01T07:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=15092"},"modified":"2018-12-01T09:34:20","modified_gmt":"2018-12-01T15:34:20","slug":"review-appointed-rounds-by-michael-mcfee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/15092","title":{"rendered":"Review: Appointed Rounds by Michael McFee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Appointed Rounds<\/em>\u00a0: Essays<\/em>\u00a0(Mercer University Press, February 2018)
\nReviewed by Maria Carlos<\/p>\n

As with Michael McFee\u2019s other works, which include another book of essays and numerous poetry collections, Appointed Rounds <\/em>(Mercer University Press, 2018) mulls over the minutiae of our daily dues, the overlooked details and unsung mechanisms that define our perceptions of and movement through the world. Not to be confused with the overused adage, Stop and smell the roses, <\/em>no\u2014McFee\u2019s allegiance to earthly detail requires attention beyond \u201cStop\u201d <\/em>and demands a more focused engagement with our surroundings: hands-and-knees leveling with those roses, a study of their thorns, cataloguing leaves, sifting through the petals like sheets of paper in a filing cabinet. These forty-nine essays (fifty, if one includes the preface), organized by theme into seven numbered sections, employ the same pithiness and precision one would expect after reading McFee\u2019s poetry\u2014they range from single sentences or paragraphs to more expansive, sweeping essays divided into brief segments\u2014and reveal a rich and vast devotion to language, to teaching poetry, to his home in the mountains of North Carolina, and to every writer\u2019s first love: the physical, three-dimensional body of a book.<\/p>\n

The origin of Appointed Rounds<\/em>\u2019 title is nestled in its longest piece: \u201cThe Mail,\u201d which reads like a series of odes to the United States Postal Service. Each section illuminates a different angle of McFee\u2019s attitude toward the subject: appreciating the enduring anatomy of a public USPS mailbox\u2019s \u201cmass-produced barrel vault\u201d and \u201ctruncated metal tunnel,\u201d his daily pilgrimage down the lawn to retrieve his personal mail, a writer\u2019s anticipation of the mail carrier\u2019s return with various rejection letters and the occasional happy surprise, a childhood hobby of collecting stamps that evolved into a collection of postcards, and so much more. As his thoughtful meditations on mail unspool across thirty-one sections, varying in tone and focus, McFee anchors his readers with an underlying thread that ties it all together: a subtle elegiac tone for his father, a dedicated USPS employee for nearly thirty-five years, whose familial, metal address sign \u201ccrowns a bookcase\u201d in McFee\u2019s office\u2014\u201cIt\u2019s not exactly a grave marker, and yet it is.\u201d Beyond romanticized nostalgia for handwritten letters, beyond recognizing the invisibility USPS workers so often endure, McFee\u2019s essay echoes Robert Hayden\u2019s \u201cThose Winter Sundays\u201d in its quiet affection and plain-stated gratitude for the modesty and anonymity of his father\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

The book takes its title from the unofficial USPS motto: \u201cNeither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.\u201d McFee draws a thoughtful parallel between his father\u2019s work ethic and his own, the daily dedication it takes to be a writer, similarly unthwarted by the stormy elements that can too often steer one away from the page\u2014rumbling clouds of self-doubt, laziness, numerous rejections from literary publications, etc. \u201cSlow Down,\u201d the first essay in the book\u2019s final section, reminds poetry-lovers\u2014perhaps, more broadly, anyone who loves writing, whatever the genre\u2014of the primal, elementary and yet most enduring first lesson every writer learns: that we must slow down<\/em>. McFee suggests that a poem to be written \u201cneeds to take its time, gather momentum and necessity, work its way toward words\u201d and that a poem to be read requires \u201cslow-motion reading, where you\u2019re allowed to take your time and savor the text in depth, its sounds, its movement, its concentrated and implicit nature,\u201d as if it were a delicious meal or good drink\u2014something to be savored or sipped, slowly. It\u2019s no surprise that McFee\u2014with his prolific publishing successes and illustrious teaching career, a diligent writer from a working-class family\u2014would (should) include shimmering gems of advice for other writers, both young and old, about the work that words demand within the lines of these essays. Without sounding moralizing or pedantic, he humbly reminds his audience, and especially the writers among them, the gift that books provide: time collapsing, stretching, and humming in the background of the deep revelations that words can bring.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most striking evidence of McFee\u2019s adoration for literature and dedication to writing lies in the first section of essays, a thoughtful sequence in which he breaks down the components of a book and examines them with care, patience, precision, and affection. McFee begins with the book\u2019s physical body, its cover, and then delves into the minute details: the significance of the word \u201cby,\u201d a \u201cdurable little preposition,\u201d and the excitement and power of its function as \u201ca hinge between title and author\u201d; the table of contents in which the book\u2019s offerings are \u201claid out for the reader like a feast\u201d; the acknowledgments, where \u201cthe author must pause to say grace, to give thanks for what we\u2019re about to enjoy\u201d; and even the blank pages in the front and back matter of a book, reminding the reader \u201cthat any volume is as much white space as words, as much silence as sound, as much inarticulate and essential breath as actual utterance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>This opening section\u2014along with the rest of the book\u2019s odd-numbered sections that continue his musings on inscriptions, blurbs, manuscript, and more\u2014resists any overly-meta intellectualizing it might suggest; instead, through brevity, poignant anecdotes, and playful metaphors, McFee reveals himself to be, as he says, a biblioptimist. Through his unabashed love for books, he reminds his readers of their simplicity and goodness\u2014titles and authors\u2019 names printed along spines on a dusty shelf, the musty smell of old pages and the sighing sounds of their turning, a stranger\u2019s marginalia.<\/p>\n

Appointed Rounds<\/em> leaves readers with a topic familiar to every budding writer: immortality, the wistful desire for a writer\u2019s words to outlive him or her, to remain intact on acid-free paper and ever-relevant through the passage of time and shifting modish of literary trends. The last essay echoes the book\u2019s first words, \u201cA book has a body,\u201d in acknowledging the way its body might decay, \u201cthe ink that fades, the paper that yellows or crumbles or burns.\u201d McFee\u2019s consciousness of his own mortality is directly related to the mortality of his words\u2014\u201cThough a writer doesn\u2019t count on it and can\u2019t predict it, such immortality would be a surprise and a delight, a heaven to strive for, even if it may not exist.\u201d By the book\u2019s end, readers are reminded of the strengths that have made McFee such an enduring presence in the canon of Appalachian poets, a necessary voice in the chorus of contemporary Southern writers: with a style employing muscular language, lean sentences and humble observations of earthly particulars, McFee shares his quotidian, essential rounds; and in doing so, he reveals larger archetypal patterns, broad and intricate designs which connect his audience, everyone, anyone, to each other by illuminating the day-to-day routines that we forget to cherish.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Maria Isabelle Carlos is a\u00a0poet from Columbia MO. Her work has appeared in\u00a0The Collagist, Salamander,\u00a0and elsewhere. She received her B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is currently a M.F.A. candidate at Vanderbilt University and assistant editor of poetry and nonfiction for the\u00a0Nashville Review.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Appointed Rounds\u00a0: Essays\u00a0(Mercer University Press, February 2018) Reviewed by Maria Carlos As with Michael McFee\u2019s other works, which include another book of essays and numerous poetry collections, Appointed Rounds (Mercer University Press, 2018) mulls over the minutiae of our daily dues, the overlooked details and unsung mechanisms that define our perceptions of and movement through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1704,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[54],"tags":[55],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-3Vq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1704"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15092"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15165,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15092\/revisions\/15165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}