A Collection by Shannon McDonald

Title: football friday nights
Publisher: Parted Curtain Press, 52 pages
Price: USD 13.00
Private collection

It begins with a memory, or perhaps a dream. Or a daydream. Whatever the beautiful specter haunting his mind is in fact, she has so captivated him that, years after a moment's glimpse in the dark, he is compelled to pursue her, in his imagination, with the longing of a high school boy's heart.

So opens poet Shannon McDonald's debut book, football friday nights. A collection of verse in various forms, strung together like Christmas lights in a common theme, the work is a paean to high school loves, both romantic and athletic. Openly autobiographical and unshrinkingly personal, it evokes and explores a nostalgic world in which the losses are as prized as the gains.

This is the gift of the poet, this willingness to reveal what the rest of us usually keep—sometimes desperately—concealed. And the gift of great poetry is its ability to strike in us a sudden chord of recognition. It is the power of poetry that it rings true.

McDonald's poetry does all of that. His evocation of school halls, baseball games and chaperoned dances is poignant in its imagery. That imagery is often beyond words to describe; the true art of poetry is an act of emotion. McDonald evinces those emotions through wordplay, wherein verbs transform themselves into nouns, and nouns become adjectives. When even then no word suffices, he deftly creates one, bringing to life those subtle nuances of seemingly mundane experiences, making them resonate with their deeper meanings. As in "Don't Blame Me:"

"Ahhh..." After the stuffy air inside we hit
the night air menth-elated while in the
September sky the bright moon, detected
but not seen, broke its shining through with troubling
of the bruised clouds...

But such operations are not tossed in lightly; they are not frivolous banter. Rather, they're well thought-out placements, designed to release specific responses in the reader that might otherwise be shut in by our everyday lexicon. It took me a moment to catch on to his technique; but once recognized, I found myself thrilling to each new instance. In the emotional context, no other words make sense.

While many poetry collections consist in disparate and often unconnected selections, football friday nights offers us a story. It's a teenage romance, told from the point of view of a lovestruck boy whose encounters with his dreamed-about lover are fleeting, tentative and filled with longing. McDonald weaves this colorful thread masterfully through the tapestry of 1960s high school experience.

I found football friday nights a joy to read. Anyone who attended high school in the fifties and sixties will feel quite at home here. And anyone who has ever felt the yearning of a schoolhouse crush will find him- or herself empathizing with, and rooting for, the young man who wants nothing more than to be noticed and loved.