If Pressed--the second collection of poetry from acclaimed Canadian poet Andrew McEwan--explores forms of pressurized and pressurizing language as a means to shed light on the depressions we live among in our modern-day lives.

Overlapping language of fear and speculation gain momentum in these poems, where layers of atmospheric and emotional lexicons--ranging from descriptions of the mid-2000s financial crisis and subsequent recession, to writing on melancholia from the 1600s, to weather reports and condo listings, to pharmaceutical sales pitches and literary book reviews--focus attention on the ways that anxiety so easily and completely infiltrates our daily personal and public experiences.

Praise for If Pressed:
“The poems in Andrew McEwan’s If Pressed form a ‘Book of Disquiet’ that revises Pessoa’s gloomy wanderings for a 21st North American century, in a world where ideologico-social retrogressions meld science and market consumption into one. Pressed here, the consumptional compositional mind struggles valiantly in its body like a pinned bug or flower to enfront the dystopias of Now. This is taut and accomplished work.” —Erín Moure

“This book is like a clock. This book cares. This book points to the effects of imagination. This book welcomes you to the crisis economy. This book is historically reliable. This book is bound by ligaments. This book is a sound buying decision. This book promotes profit. This book comes close to the truth. This book is a mutual triumph. This book restores connections. This book departs limits. This book splinters paths. This book is a subtle luxury. This book is depressing. I love this book.” —Jordan Abel, Winner of the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize for Injun