Apocalypse Dance

“Ethan McGuire’s Apocalypse Dance is a collection of poetry that uses all of history as its subject and all of humanity as its theme. We feel the cold and the warmth of his textured images and recognize the sentiment behind each word, whether he speaks of ancient times or of his American hometown. McGuire’s love of music seeps into his poems and gives them depth and dimension. His words read like lyrics—rich with detail, raw with emotion, and ripe with meaning.”

Jeannie Zokan

“Apocalypse Dance is indeed always dancing. It dances with Christianity, Taoism, and Buddhism. It dances through spiritual geography, through relationship issues (with God and others), through reworkings of song lyrics and translations from Classical Chinese. It is always thrumming with the passionate fascination McGuire brings to all he captures.”

Aaron Poochigian

“Ethan McGuire’s debut work of poetry, Apocalypse Dance, is a beautiful collection of short poems that sings to the heart and soul of the human condition. A splendid book which features how poems of all sizes can be beautiful, the reader is entreated to couplets, tercets, quatrains, and sonnets that make the reader want to sing and dance with what they are reading. The gentle reader might just be welcomed into eternity with the poems that Ethan McGuire has decided to share with the world.”

Paul Krause

“These are honest, heartfelt poems. Inspired by ancient writers, modern-day musicians, friendship, love, and the sheer strangeness of daily life, they ask clear-eyed questions about ‘what has been, what is, will be.’ McGuire avoids easy solace in his answers, instead working toward conclusions that are less certain and more true. He’s also willing to be playful, keeping us on the hook with variations in mood and form. Whether deftly translating a Song dynasty sage, attentively cataloguing a hurricane’s aftermath, or quietly noting his exact distance from home, this is a poet who is always writing for one simple reason: his love of poetry.”

Alice Allan

“Ethan McGuire’s poetry and writings have been thought provoking and a joy to read over the years. He began contributing to Fevers of the Mind six years ago. I have seen him grow in his comfort with imagery to become one of the most intelligent wordsmiths in the game. Ethan’s influences are shown through the many wonderful lyricists that influence so many: Leonard Cohen, C. S. Lewis, Sylvia Plath, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, other prophets of word. Ethan’s vast knowledge of history and the issues of the current day put you in the moment.”

David L. O’Nan

“Ethan McGuire’s Apocalypse Dance is built on poems of passion and devotion that draw on inspirations ranging from classical Chinese poetry and Gerard Manley Hopkins to Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. McGuire is also mindful of the music of his words in ways that place him among our best formal poets.”

A.M. Juster

“Ethan McGuire takes us from the neon lights and pulsing music of clubs to the silence of starry skies. He takes us from his ancestral Ozarks to Bashō’s Japan (bringing both together in his remarkable long poem “The Bluegrass Players”). This is an impressive full-collection debut from a versatile poet and translator with a musician’s ear.”

Steven Knepper

“Ethan McGuire’s debut collection, ‘split between tradition and progression,’ showcases a young poet exploring forms and tones, histories and traditions as he seeks to traverse, in language, ‘one thousand li of dreams.’ His poems are at once religiously grounded and formally restless—as he himself explains, ‘I throw myself into structure, / The structured darkness of the Tao.’ Yet his impressive engagement with Eastern language and literature is quickened by a cultural command of Bob Dylan and Bluegrass, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Leonard Cohen. Apocalypse Dance will introduce readers to a new poet with great potential, his poems ‘new things . . . connecting worlds.’”

Amit Majmudar