Two Appearances After the Resurrection

"Jesus remained mysterious to the disciples when he drifted briefly among them after his death. McCrae’s poems honor mystery by testing appearances—the black man seen from three angles by the artist Toyin Ojih Odutola, or 'light hypnotized from water,' or police horses. The dead and the living struggle to commune in these intricately crafted poems:  marvels of attunement, holding harmony and dissonance, forgiveness and pain, all in the same lines. The sacred is hard to see, here on earth. But McCrae makes it visible."


"Jesus remained mysterious to the disciples when he drifted briefly among them after his death. McCrae’s poems honor mystery by testing appearances—the black man seen from three angles by the artist Toyin Ojih Odutola, or 'light hypnotized from water,' or police horses. The dead and the living struggle to commune in these intricately crafted poems:  marvels of attunement, holding harmony and dissonance, forgiveness and pain, all in the same lines. The sacred is hard to see, here on earth. But McCrae makes it visible."


"McCrae’s poems of disquiet dazzle with their tenderness and precision as they explore ‘life outliving life’ in a landscape of violence and erasure. Autobiography hovers at the edges of these verses, made rigorous by history and art, given clamor by McCrae’s unmistakable music. Two Appearances After the Resurrection , his marvelous new collection, is mournful and defiant and fierce in every way."


Shane McCrae is the author of poetry collections including New and Collected Hell and The Many Hundreds of the Scent and a memoir, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun . McCrae has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.