Q-Drive and Other Poems

In dialogue with his Modernist forebears-Cummings and Williams, in particular-Muldowney's carefully observed poems attend to the textures of language, while inviting us to see the world in its particularity through the eyes of the child-as-naturalist, the man-as-son, as spouse, and as father.-Alba Newmann Holmes, Assistant Professor of English and Interim Director of the Writing Associates Program at Swarthmore College
Weeks after reading "Confessions," a long, fragmented poem in which a man on the street approaches the narrator, begging forgiveness for murder, I am still haunted by his pleadings: " 'What do I do? Tell me . . . How am I forgiven hombre de Dios? Tell me!' / I prop him up. 'Save me hombre de Dios!' He tugs my hand ... Begs." Muldowney's halting, stumbling lines that weave in footnoted Spanish and English give even more pain to the scene: discomfort in being approached, the horror of the crimes committed, the uselessness of one man forgiving another for such violence. All the poems in Q-Drive are so crafted: Starting with pieces that evoke a country childhood, moving into a world-traveled adult, Micah Muldowney's poems are rich in image and soaked in the varying languages of time and place. The characters in the narrative pieces are true and vibrant, lingering with you.-Scott Russel Morris, Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Utah Asia Campus