The Cataracts

January 1, 2018
“Now, every living person comes at the expense,/ to a greater or lesser degree, of every other living person,” writes McDaniel (Special Powers and Abilities) in this sprawling but rich collection about perception and empathy. The eye, as a nexus of biological and ethical vision, anchors the poems’ questions about global atrocity, film, biblical history, and community responsibility. McDaniel finds capability in what is usually understood as a handicap, for example writing of nearsightedness: “my handwriting was imperceptible without magnification, but, magnified, proved impeccable.” The narratively driven poems turn from colloquial storytelling to beautiful lyric descriptions, as in a poem about Star Trek that describes a diamond as “the making of pearl inverted.” Often, it feels as if the contradictions McDaniel finds couldn’t be expressed any other way: “If in the present you see what you cannot believe,/ you call what you see a vision, as if the means by which you would see/ what cannot be there becomes synonymous with the thing/ you cannot see.” Even though there are a few too many poems included here, touching too often on similar questions, McDaniel renders each poem’s discoveries with a worthwhile particularity.