Named a Best Poetry Book of 2022 by Library Journal

"McCrae's poems possess a self-reflective quality without being burdened by history. As in Beckett and Whitman, repetition generates a self-searching, hypnotic music. His poetry moves freely within the restricted syllabic lines, constructing a wild, vivid dreamworld . . . [Cain Named the Animal] confirms McCrae as one of the most erudite and inventive poets of our time, throwing punches at the English language and its hierarchical traditions." --Kit Fan, The Guardian (UK)

"What [McCrae] observes at the end of 'Worldful, ' 'but what life does / Not have to be reduced to be imagined, ' is true of any description or summary of the best of these lyrics. Praise is due for their craft, but even more so for their imaginative power." --Michael Autrey, Booklist

"McCrae's poems allude to literary precursors like Dante, Milton, and the Bible, but the voice is unabashedly of our time . . . By seeking to heal the rift in his own identity, McCrae has listened intently to the literary echoes emanating from the English language and transmuted them through his own dynamic voice." --David Woo, Poetry

"[Shane McCrae] is peer to the peerless . . . You can feel the stage on the page here, poems that even as blotted ink on middle-weight paper seem to have sound." --B. A. Van Sise, New York Journal of Books

"Prophetic and necessary . . . This dazzling collection tests the limits of language, memory, and mythmaking in wildly inventive, often devastating ways." --Publishers Weekly

"Readers will marvel at McCrae's ability to achieve Miltonic scope with such economy of expression." --Library Journal