City of Incandescent Light

“ We are all just trying / to make it through yesterday” writes Matt McBride in this painfully insightful exploration of our twenty-first-century brand of alienation. In poems that are stylish and skewering, with uncommon wit and unsettling resonance, McBride takes on technology, militarism, love, nostalgia, divorce, the ubiquity of advertising, the institution of the presidency, and the ever-expanding surveillance state. This is a deeply sad and strangely fun and totally shining book that has given me, among other things, the best slogan I’ ve heard yet for the current moment: “ no flag is small enough.” -Natalie Shapero

Matt McBride's work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from Conduit, The Cortland Review, Guernica, The Laurel Review, Ninth Letter, and Zone 3 among others. His full-length collection, City of Incandescent Light, won the 2016 St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. Additionally, he is the author of four chapbooks. The most recent, Prerecorded Weather, co-written with Noah Falck, won the 2022 James Tate Prize and is available from SurVision Books. He is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Grant and an Elliston Poetry Fellowship. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the English program at Wilson College.