Flint Memorial Library (North Reading)

Tropic of squalor, poems, Mary Karr

eng

no index present

poetry

Tropic of squalor

1000375920

Mary Karr

poems

"Long before she earned accolades for her genre-defining memoirs, Mary Karr was winning poetry prizes. Now the beloved author returns with a collection of bracing poems as visceral, deeply felt, and hilarious as her memoirs. In Tropic of Squalor, Karr dares to address the numinous--that mystery some of us hope toward in secret, or maybe dare to pray to. The "squalor" of meaninglessness that every thoughtful person wrestles with sits at the core of human suffering, and Karr renders it with power--illness, death, love's agonized disappointments. Her brazen verse calls us out of our psychic swamplands and into that hard-won awareness of the divine hiding in the small moments that make us human. In a single poem she can generate tears, horror, empathy, laughter, and peace. She never preaches. But whether you're an adamant atheist, a pilgrim, or skeptically curious, these poems will urge you to find an inner light in the most baffling hours of darkness." --Front flap of dust jacket

The organ donor's driver's license has a black check -- Loony bin basketball -- The burning girl -- Illiterate progenitor -- Read these -- Discomfort food for the unwhole -- The devil's delusion -- Dear Oklahoma teen smashed on Reservation Road -- The age of criticism -- Exurbia -- Lord, I was faithless -- Suicide's note: An annual -- The awakening (after Milosz) -- How God speaks -- Face down -- The child abuse tour -- The less Holy Bible : I. Genesis: animal planet -- II. Numbers: poison profundis -- III. Leviticus: in dreams begin responsibilities -- IV. Exodus: bolt action -- V. Chronicles: Hell's kitchen -- VI. Wisdom: the voice of God -- VII. Judges: awe and disorder -- VIII. Obadiah: a perfect mess -- IX. Ecclesiastes: amok run -- X. Psalms: Carnegie Hall rush seats -- XI. Hey Jude: prophetic interlude by the ghost of Walt Whitman -- XII. Malachi: truckload of nails -- XIII. Hebrews: the mogul -- XIV. Lamentations: the more deceived -- XV. Kings: the obscenity prayer -- XVI. Marks and Johns: the Blessed Mother complains to the Lord her God about the abundance of brokenness she receives -- XVII. Acts: the Like button -- XVIII. Petering: recuperation from the sunk love under the aegis of Christ and Isaac Babel -- XIX. Philemon: notes from the underground -- XX. Revelation: the messenger -- Coda toward the New New Covenant: Death sentence