Overview

Winner of the John Ridland Poetry Prize. In Andrea Carter's powerful Figeater, ""we follow the/road, the terrible invention// of hope"" until we reach the place where desire stretches the limits of what a heart can endure. Like Jupiter's great storm, this collection is ""a constant/ hurricane, grasping, expanding, / feeling for a purchase, stability, / a place to collapse, fall apart, re-/accumulate."" What abundant, soulful, heartwork. -Tomás Q. Morín In Figeater, Andrea Carter shows herself to be a master of extended metaphor and the lyric. The book chronicles abuse, abandonment, betrayal-the men often seeing someone else, the mother as wicked queen-""I am a moving violation"" says the speaker-trapped with ""no one to release me from my glass coffin."" There is emptiness and hunger here-""No one will know//the hunger of us."" The central reveal is scattered like breadcrumbs throughout the book: ""I looked more like/an adult even at ten, and my body//belonged to my stepfather."" In a key poem, ""The Welder,"" the speaker is likened to Hephaestus, metal worker to the gods-""the daughter is [...]/the conjoining joint, testament//between her mother/and the man her mother sends/her daughter to//in order to make him happy."" Figeater is a blistering, deeply felt tribute to Carter's ability to open a coherent and difficult world with language both lush and sharp. It is beautifully wrought. -Donna Spruijt-Metz

Full Product Details

9781957062259

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available