Overview

Three sequences of poems engaging with deserts, consumerism, Alaskan ice, religious icons, and more. The poems collected in The Book of Marys and Glaciers traverse both the psychological and physical landscape to explore the too-muchness and overwhelm that categorizes our demand-driven age. The longest series, ""Dust Cover,"" is a meditation on deserts of all kinds—geographic, urban, celestial, domestic, and linguistic. The poems themselves enact their own ideas of space and emptiness, building to a work that grain after grain becomes heavy as a whole. In contrast, the title sequence ""The Book of Marys and Glaciers"" is an expansive work of feminist ecopoetics that asks questions about the role of women as mothers, religious figures, friends, and lovers in a society that rarely makes room for quietude anymore. Altogether, the poems are controlled, precise investigations and interrogations of the ideas and images we take for granted.

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9781961209541

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Reviews

""Adams offers a graceful synthesis of poetic and scientific language. Everyday experiences become a locus for vastly different discourses--literary, scientific, and historical--which overlap and intersect as they are inscribed upon a single concrete image.""-- ""Kristina Marie Darling, Colorado Review"" ""As Adams nimbly unfolds language, she opens tunnels of thought and illuminates the misconceptions we have of our emotions and our selves. Her precise and insightful language shifts and reshapes us, causes us to pause and reconsider the world we thought we lived in, the things we thought we knew.""-- ""Laura Isaacman, Coffin Factory"" ""This poetry is magic. Ultimately, Adams challenges her readers to observe intensely the world around us, to decide for ourselves which particulars are clues to be deciphered and which questions are asking for our answers.""-- ""Marisa Siegel, Rumpus"" ""You read a lot of books of poetry when you're a poet yourself. Some will move you and some will not. But I love the ones where you can't read a page without wanting to write some poetry of your own because this writer inspires you that much. Carrie Olivia Adams is just such a writer.""-- ""Chris Mansel, Galatea Resurrects""

“This poetry is magic. Ultimately, Adams challenges her readers to observe intensely the world around us, to decide for ourselves which particulars are clues to be deciphered and which questions are asking for our answers.” * Marisa Siegel, Rumpus * “As Adams nimbly unfolds language, she opens tunnels of thought and illuminates the misconceptions we have of our emotions and our selves. Her precise and insightful language shifts and reshapes us, causes us to pause and reconsider the world we thought we lived in, the things we thought we knew.” * Laura Isaacman, Coffin Factory * “You read a lot of books of poetry when you’re a poet yourself. Some will move you and some will not. But I love the ones where you can’t read a page without wanting to write some poetry of your own because this writer inspires you that much. Carrie Olivia Adams is just such a writer.” * Chris Mansel, Galatea Resurrects * “Adams offers a graceful synthesis of poetic and scientific language. Everyday experiences become a locus for vastly different discourses—literary, scientific, and historical—which overlap and intersect as they are inscribed upon a single concrete image.” * Kristina Marie Darling, Colorado Review *

Author Information

Carrie Olivia Adams lives in Chicago, where she is the executive editor for Black Ocean and the Promotions and Marketing Communications Director for the University of Chicago Press. Her books include Be the thing of memory, Operating Theater, Forty-One Jane Doe’s, and Intervening Absence, in addition to the chapbooks Proficiency Badges, Grapple, Overture in the Key of F, and A Useless Window. She is the curator of the Poetry & Biscuits house reading series and the newsletter of the same name, and when she’s not making poems, she’s probably making biscuits. 

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