McNair’s important first collection was published in 1983 by the University of Missouri Breakthrough Series as a Devins Award-winner, the collection was reprinted in 2001 by Carnegie Mellon University Press in their Classic Contemporaries Series.
"McNair writes with apparent artlessness but actually with a very well-concealed and well-controlled skill while maintaining throughout the book the tones, rhythms, and accents of American speech. He is clear and simple yet original, a rare combination."
—David Wagoner, Judge of the 1983 Devins Award for Poetry
"A subtly shaded, powerful view of the modern Romantic imagination at work saving the past."
— Prairie Schooner
