David R. Godine, Publisher
Softcover
Pages: 96
Size: 5.5" x 8.25"
Published: October 1998
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In this elegantly balanced collection— poems long and short, poems personal and universal, poems descriptive and reflective—Wesley McNair casts his eye on everything from his own pet dog to an executive's torments in Hell. However, the real beauty of Fire does not lie with its range, but with its carefully tended boundaries.

McNair successfully speaks in both a personal tone, evoking an essay or memoir, and a more distant one, reminiscent of a folklorist. These are poems with the detailed and authentic cadence of a true New Englander's voice resounding through every line.

Critical Praise

“McNair brings life to lifeless things."
—Boston Globe 

"McNair has a kind of sixth sense for the poetry hidden in the unforgiving New England landscape."
— Minneapolis Star Tribune 

"Poems personal yet universal by a master craftsman with a remarkable ear."
—Maxine Kumin, Ploughshares

"[He has] one of the most inventive minds in American poetry."
—Hartford Courant