Composed during the spring of the 2020, Trail marks a verbal and acoustical path through the Outer Cape’s National Seashore. Echoing notes from her two previous collections, Nine Over Sixes and Oral Lake, in this digital chapbook offered gratis, Mary Maxwell addresses the pandemic’s social isolation and communal loss. In accompanying voice recordings, electronic sounds gesture toward music’s abstractions.
Original. Inventive. Dedicated. Precise. These are the words Richard Howard has used to describe the work of Mary Maxwell. In these most recent lyrics she deftly employs her distinctive approaches as response to present contexts, arguing as she does in her afterword that “the ongoing task of the artist becomes both political and individual, requiring sincere observation followed by determined reconciliation of assembled phenomena. Truth is grown from scrutiny. “ In Trail the poet continues to stake her claim as a crucial presence in the world of poetry. More insistent than ever, her voice asks to be heard.