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The poet’s first full-length collection, Quiet Money's New Edition consists almost exclusively of longer narrative poems, including the title poem about a bootlegger/pilot who flew the Atlantic solo before Charles Lindbergh. This piece is often cited as one of the most important poems of the 1980s and the movement to revive storytelling in verse.
McDowell's poemsarresting, humorous, and strangely surrealisticrecall the work of poets like George Hitchcock, Charles Bukowski, and the early Robert Creeley. In one poem, a man makes "a withdrawal at Donut Bank"; in another, a librarian tells her patrons, "you are eating a marvelous story." McDowell also demonstrates considerable narrative power, as in the title poem, which concerns an unknown aviator in the Lindbergh era. Other poems chronicle our more recent era of broken marriages, lost jobs, and urban violencea world of cordless phones (his favorite image), " People magazine and peanut butter/ Squares." This is an intriguing first book, original in its phrasing and unfailingly sensitive to the pathos and humor that define our lives. Recommended for larger collections. Daniel L. Guillory, English Dept., Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Library Journal