If Pressed–the second collection of poetry from Andrew McEwan—explores forms of pressurized and pressurizing language as a means to shed light on the depressions we live among.

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.