University of Missouri Press
Softcover
Pages: 64
Size: 5.25" x 8.5"
Published: 1983
BUY NOW

Winner of the 1984 Devins Award for Poetry

Beginning with themes of change and loss in northern New England, Wesley McNair’s debut conducts a dark journey into the pasts of the region, the nation, and the poet. The poems of the journey, leading back to 1853 and beyond, trace acts of violence, myths of success, and failures of vision.

The collection concludes with a return to contemporary New England, and poems that reveal a new connection between the poet and his world. In its range of tones, its variety of free-verse forms, and its sense of history, The Faces of Americans in 1853 is an unusually ambitious book.

Reissued in 2001 by Carnegie Mellon University Press.

Advance Praise

"McNair writes with apparent artlessness but actually with a very well-concealed and well-controlled skill while maintaining throughout the book the tones, rhythms, and accents of American speech. He is clear and simple yet original, a rare combination."
—David Wagoner, Judge of the 1983 Devins Award for Poetry 

Critical Praise

"A subtly shaded, powerful view of the modern Romantic imagination at work saving the past."
—Prairie Schooner