Description
Ultimately, we all end up losers, at least to the atheist or agnostic, but The Least by Mac Gay documents a sample of the myriad that get a head start, whether as the unfortunate, the infamous, or the exhausted, for as Victor Hugo mentions concerning his voluminous tome Les Miserables, “there is a point… at which the unfortunate and the infamous are associated into a single word.” And that word, his book’s title, translates for this book’s purposes into The Least. Gay’s narratives and dramatic monologues describe individually and in detail the misfits and the misbegotten, the tired, the unlucky, and the antiheroic, in all their pain, misery, and frustration. Perhaps we are all frail, comic facsimiles of Jesus, stumbling along in the dark, falling into our various foibles, pitfalls, and vices, longing for redemption. Whether readers can find themselves here or not is for them to discover, but the author in some strange way finds himself on nearly every page. Let the believers be reminded of Jesus’s declaration from the book of Mark: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me.”
Praise for The Least
“We’re dust to dust; our torment lies between” writes Mac Gay in his poem “Murder House,” in his latest devastatingly powerful collection of poetry, The Least. The line could almost be a thesis statement for this book which with formal dexterity and unflinching precision explores the hard-bitten, the forgotten, the dangerous, and the heart-breaking. At the center of each poem is the understanding of death’s looming possibility and presence. These are not easy poems, but they are true and wise ones—poems threaded through with Gay’s signature wry humor, sharp wit, and discerning acuity. The Least is a book that pushes us to pay attention, to watch our backs, and to remain grateful for the grace of everyday.
—Beth Gylys, author of Bodies that Hum and Body Braille
A few months ago, after reading another lame, self-aggrandizing poem in The New Yorker, I asked myself: where are the real poets, those who forge heart and intellect and craft into something that is, as Dylan Thomas said, “a contribution to reality?” Now I’ve found one. Mac Gay’s poems are the real thing, a beautiful balance of sound and sense. Like the worthiest ghost, they surprise and haunt us. Bravo!
—Ron Rash, author of Poems: New and Selected and Nothing Gold Can Stay
From out of rural Georgia comes a mind that sees at once both the horror and comedy of the human condition. The best poems of Mac Gay’s fine book seem like little lightning bolts stopped just before they hit the ground.
—Leon Stokesbury, author of The Drifting Away and You Are Here: Poems New and Old
Mac Gay sees humanity in all its disastrous glory. Deftly mixing rhyme and meter with free verse poems, he can make us laugh and feel the shuddering knife edge of mortality simultaneously. Employing a variety of voices, these poems entice us into a world of “bars, the real churches,” job sites, and cathedrals built of the poet’s own language and imagination. These poems should be read as long as there are men and women who take pleasure in the stories of why we are here.
—Al Maginnes, author of The Next Place and The Beasts That Vanish
