Poetry is not the world.
We cannot breathe its atmosphere,
we cannot live there, but we can visit,
like sponge divers in bulbous copper helmets
come to claim some small portion
of the miraculous.
—from “Poetry and the World”

After nearly a decade, In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys marks a return for Campbell McGrath to the poetic forms that brought him national acclaim—lyrical mediations on American art and society by turns satirical, tender and haunted by the merciless work of time. In poems such as “Dick Cheney Speaks to Me in a Dream” and “Shopping for Pomegranates at Wal-Mart on New Year’s Day” McGrath explores the intersection of the personal and the public realms of American culture like no other poet at work today. Whether he’s documenting the decay and transformation of American cities, eulogizing Allen Ginsberg and Frank O’Hara, or rhapsodizing on t