Glass Factory

Book excerpt: Poetry. Environmental Studies. Chemically speaking, glass is neither a liquid nor a solid; it has properties of both states of being. It is precisely these kinds of ambiguities of experience, internal and external, that McCabe's crisp yet sonically adroit poems seek to reveal. In a world in which all matter is destined for ruin, we find a speaker who again and again not only holds the elusive present in her fierce attention but also praises the very processes that, while ushering new fruit from the trees, erase all that has been, including the familiar self, which is at every moment already "turning, turning" into something other.