No Timid Electra

The voice in No Timid Electra is bold, “more schoolboy than shrinking violet”, the kind of guide a reader can rely upon for an unflinching look at the world. In Katherine MacCue’s hands, the everyday, the ancestral and the mythic blend together to heighten both the strangeness and the beauty of life. A face is “dotted with freckles like little towns along a local map.” A horse’s mane is noted for its kingliness. These poems are driven not by trauma but by a courage born of deep curiosity. In the title poem, the story of a modern family is given a Biblical twist, yet it is question, “what sound does the ache take on?” that lingers long after. MacCue and her Electra are new Virgils in a world in need of the female gaze.

—Leslie McGrath, author of By the Windpipe