“An unexpected story and a gem of a book.” — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette   The incomparable Campbell McGrath, whom Outside magazine calls, “A writer who could help save poetry from academia and get the rest of us reading it again,” delivers an astounding work: Shannon, an epic poem that traces the remarkable journey of the youngest member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The Kansas City Star praises Shannon as, “A luminescent narrative…a myth of American character before its corruption,” and Campbell McGrath—Poet Laureate, Guggenheim Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, and three-time Academy of American Poets Prize winner—proves once again to be truly an “everyman poet” who channels the spirit of Walt Whitman in this lyrical adventure. “A meditation on a new, westering nation’s discovery of its own inestimable riches....Surely, the sort of task McGrath undertakes here represents one of literature’s profoundest pleasures. A poet tirelessly digs up something buried by days, years, centuries. And then he holds it to the light.” - Washington Post “An unexpected story and a gem of a book.” - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “An astonishing facility for evoking sweep and nuance and connecting them to the reader in a refined and absorbing narrative. Shannon is a fitting tribute to one of the greatest of American adventures.” - Post and Courier (Charlotte, NC) “McGrath treads lightly on philosophy and existential angst and instead turns to something both more modest and stronger, a kind of wry truth wrung out from the dirty rags of Shannon’s wanderings.” - Quarterly Conversation “A luminescent narrative...the stanza spacing, the line breaks and the quiet rhythms of Shannon’s speech ...suggest the continent’s vastness...Shannon’s understated lyricism ― the apprehension of nature before the onset of self-consciousness...reflects heightened maturity in McGrath’s work.” - Kansas City Star “Faithful to the language, tone, and style of written journals from the time, McGrath’s Shannon glories in the wonder of the land, especially the mystery and majesty of the buffalo, as we readers do in the spirit of the man. . . . Recommended for poetry collections and an illuminating adjunct to American history collections.” - Library Journal “McGrath takes us back to a pivotal point in United States history through the curious eyes of an unsung hero. [’Shannon’ is] an unexpected story and a gem of a book.” - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[SHANNON is] equal parts a hallucination of malnourishment and a meditation on a new, westering nation’s discovery of its own inestimable riches . . . it instills a gradual sense of spaciousness and wonder. . . . Surely, the sort of task McGrath undertakes here represents one of literature’s profoundest pleasures. A poet tirelessly digs up something buried by days, years, centuries. And then he holds it to the light.” - Washington Post Who finds this body Be it known My name is George Shannon & I bequeath my remains To seed this land With American bones. From the inimitable Campbell McGrath comes an epic poem of George Shannon, the youngest member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, who wandered the prairie alone for sixteen days. Spinning a tale of adventure and wonderment, McGrath gives voice to Shannon's lost weeks in the wilderness, a harrowing journey of survival and discovery. With Shannon , McGrath has created both a thrilling narrative that rises from the once vast, lonely spaces of the American west and a compelling portrait of that now ineradicably altered landscape—then unmapped, wild yet bounteous, teeming with buffalo and home to native peoples—that continues to haunt the American imagination. Campbell McGrath is the author of nine previous books, eight of them available from Ecco Press. He has received numerous prestigious awards for his poetry, including a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been published in the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine , the Paris Review , the New Yorker, Poetry , and Ploughshares , among other prominent publications, and his poetry is represented in dozens of anthologies. He teaches in the MFA program at Florida International University, and lives with his family in Miami Beach.