Michael McFee discusses Appointed Rounds, his new essay collection

Thu. 2/22, 7pm:
Michael McFee discusses Appointed Rounds, his new essay collection

Michael McFee's new book takes its title from the unofficial motto of the US Postal Service: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." All of us have appointed rounds in our lives-essential things we are given to do and must try to complete, whatever the inner or outer weather, whenever the time of day or night, however we may approach those duties.

This lively and wide-ranging collection of fifty essays-many of them pointed, a page or so, in the playful manner of Robert Francis and The Satirical Rogue on Poetry, and others rolling on for much longer-addresses subjects that McFee has been thinking and caring about for decades: books, his native Western North Carolina mountains, writing, reading, editing, teaching, and, as the title suggests, the daily mail. It includes pieces on "My Inner Hillbilly" and Appalachia, on "Authors' Photos" and "Blurbs" and other parts of the physical book, on "My New Yorker" and contemporary literary culture, on "Poets as Novelists" and "Marginalia" and being a writer, on a teacher's "Gradebook" and "The Blackboard," and on authorial matters like "Voice," "Audience," and "Immortality."

The prose explorations in Appointed Rounds, like McFee's poems, are meant as appreciations, paying close attention to things that have mattered to him (and many others), savoring their details while exploring their larger design, and saving his versions of them even as they may change or fade or disappear altogether.

Michael McFee has taught poetry writing at UNC-Chapel Hill since 1990. He is the author of eleven books of poetry (most recently We Were Once Here, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2017) and two collections of essays, including the brand-new Appointed Rounds from Mercer University Press. A native of Asheville, he received the James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South from the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Event date: 
Thursday, February 22, 2018 - 7:00pm
Event address: 
752 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Appointed Rounds: Essays By Michael McFee Cover Image
$20.00
ISBN: 9780881466386
Availability: Usually Available in 5-9 Days
Published: Mercer University Press - February 1st, 2018