Paul Magee

The title poem of Later Unearthed discourses upon the inexorably preposterous House of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, in the person of King George V. The tale of James Macpherson, who was catapulted into the belly of a whale, is just as odd, though sadder. Paul Magee has a sharp eye and musical ear, with a tone that is always fellow human....

Read this sequence through from page one, or start at any point and let its circles widen, or perhaps go to the lovely, light-syllabled final lyric and discover interesting ways back. The poems themselves breach back and forth to form a questing autobiography of precipitate adulthood. They breathe into this, for perspective, the author's fascination with some of the world's...