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WESLEY MCNAIR Turning Prose into Poetry 

Grade Level: High School

English Language Arts, English Literacy, optional Technology

RELATED BOOKS:

Memoir — The Words I Chose by Wesley McNair / 2012 / A New England poet and teacher affectingly recalls finding his voice amid a rural New Hampshire childhood deeply scarred by divorce and discipline. / High School

 The Lost Child: Ozark Poems by Wesley McNair / 2014 / 2015 PEN New England Award Winner / n this volume inspired by the impending death of his mother, Wesley McNair, long a poet of New England places, takes a new path, exploring her homeplace in the Ozarks of Southern Missouri. The linked poems of the book describe characters and events with the small, telling details for which McNair is noted, yet it also includes large themes: hope, delusion, family struggles, and lost selves. But the most important theme of all is reconciliation, as McNair attempts through these poems to know and understand his mother.

Lovers of the Lost by Wesley McNair / 2010 / Praised by Maxine Kumin as a master craftsman and Philip Levine as one of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry, Wesley McNair has selected for this volume a wide range of narratives, lyrics, and meditations. His subjects, as always, are ordinary people and the lives they lead; their hopes and sorrows, their struggles and triumphs, all providing insight into New England, America, and the more obscure geography of the human heart.

 Ghosts of You and Me by Wesley McNair / 2010 / Opening with poems about growing up with family conflict in a New England of broken farms and towns, McNair explores the limits of personal wishes and American dreams.

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