Shane McCrae
Essay on Feedback

The most productive sound of the

past fifty years     is feedback



You make the amplifier hate itself     / You bring the instrument     too close you turn it up too loud

The music passes through and is     the show until it is

forced through / The forcing through becomes the show the feedback

Filling the moments when the music stops becomes the show     it blends in with

The music makes     the music richer     the music the     box

through which the music is heard not / Wanting the music anymore     of course     the amplifier



Doesn’t want anything

A tool is what it’s used for

 
Found In Volume 42, No. 03
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Shane McCrae
About the Author

Shane McCrae is the author of eight books of poetry, including Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), Sometimes I Never Suffered (FSG, 2020), and In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017). He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.