Description
“Polder” begins with extinction. The dust that existed from the first instant of creation is the dust to which in the end all creation will return, ‘sinking under its weight’. The prose-poem ‘Dust’ was written when the poet was being treated for alcoholism and began the process of recovery. The collection ends with poems addressed to Torquatus, friend of the Roman poet Horace, a dialogue across centuries that defies the dust and looks back with mixed feelings to the drinking days of ambition, pride, and failure – and celebrates the poet’s fiftieth birthday. In between are other conversations. In 2000 McCully moved to Amsterdam and began to explore the Dutch landscapes, dialects and culture that animate the second section of Polder with faces and voices past and present. In the third, ‘Masterpieces’, works by Vermeer, Rembrandt and other artists displayed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, are engaged in dialogues that range from the quizzical to the confrontational. The poet tries to find firm ground in a fragile landscape reclaimed from the hungry sea, a home in a place that is not yet home.
