Hothouse

May 1, 2017

McGlynn divides this follow-up to her debut, I Have To Go Back To 1994 and Kill a Girl, into sections that don't so much represent rooms in a house as aspects of her life--and ours. It's ingenious, and it pretty much works. The poems in the tone-setting "Bedroom" grapple with the anxieties of intimacy: "because they say love they think they can't hurt you." "Library" limns the demands of creativity: "How many times can we fold the same bone." "Parlor" moves into the public sphere--what precedes "Bedroom"--in a series of hungry poems topped by "Last Girl on the Floor": "If she dances alone in her kitchen at night, maybe she's afraid/ there are men with guns/ out there in the dark/ looking into her bright fishbowl." Despite the drinking, the true subject of "Wet Bar" is reckless behavior: "Maybe I threw a lamp at your head, / but you're the one who broke it./ You could have ducked." "Bath" gets down to elementals and "Basement" our subterranean desires and physicality. VERDICT Smart, original, spirited work.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 7, 2017
McGlynn (I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl) embraces the spectacle that is the first-person pronoun as she probes the possibilities of a performative and narrative-driven voice. At its core, the collection is an exploration of 21st-century femininity and gendered experience, though the poems are peppered with early Hollywood tropes and reminiscences—not all fond—of girlhood and adolescence. Many of McGlynn’s stronger lines (“I catch my silvered reflection/ in the open fridge and wince”) belong firmly to the confessional lineage, but McGlynn casually flirts with camp and laces her poems with self-deprecation: “She takes a swig from a beer with three butts in it./ She orders the shrimp scampi/ and feels real sophisticated.” Cameos by screen starlets such as Veronica Lake and Marlene Dietrich suggest that McGlynn seeks to interrogate and engage the male gaze as she participates in traditions of female burlesque (“I say, Audience, O Audience! Why do you seek to destroy me?”). There is also an element of a tug-of-war between the sexes that marks the collection, like a “he said, she said” story: “I hope you’re happy with yourself./ This is what happens, I said. You’re histrionic./ If it’s any consolation, I hate myself.” McGlynn confronts demons with verve, though some readers may wish for a little more seriousness.

June 1, 2017
So you want to know where I live? McGlynn (I Have to Go Back to 1984 and Kill a Girl, 2009) beckons in her eponymous opener. Come here, love. Her second collection delivers, luring readers into a world bawdy yet bright, macabre yet full of magic, and vulnerable yet sharp as a fang of . . . glass. Organized into six sections, including Bedroom, Library, and Basement, McGlynn's poems masterfully explore the dangersand wondersof womanhood, sexuality, and insecurity. Haunting hunters' bunkhouses and sauntering through swing-dancing undergrounds, McGlynn summons cheeky wordplay ( how richly / he bores me, he bores me, he bores me! she writes in California King ); makes a deal with a chocolate-bartering devil; and contemplates emotional unavailability in Ouvrir. McGlynn is a seasoned performance poet, and these poems, whip-smart, crackling with candor, and pulsing with effervescent language and plush imagery, demand to be read aloud. In The New Sincerity, McGlynn conjures an earnest anthem to be played on repeat all night long. Get out your two-tone shoes and prepare to dance. This is that anthem.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)