A Long Time to Be Gone

Poems that discover enduring pleasures in the details of our everyday lives.

Michael McFee’s twelfth collection of poetry explores challenging subjects-the realities of aging, the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the disappearance of Appalachian culture-in poems that discover enduring pleasures in the details of our everyday lives. It also includes vivid, lively, and imaginative responses to quirky words, a jazz standard, family members, celebrities, and several paintings. As one reader has said, In his poems filled with quotidian experience, the objects of the material world shimmer with consequence: they are alight with attention-McFee’s, and through his art, ours. He is one of our best poets.