ELEGY FOR THE FLOATER,
by Teresa Carson
“Now
available from www.upne.com
and major online retailers”
These poems can be harrowing. Ten children,
two troubled parents. The speaker’s own excesses and catastrophes
(remember: a lot of the time frame of this book is the 1970s!)
but always the author’s relentless honesty, clarity, understatement,
humor, and skill keep the poems from tipping into the abyss of
self-pity...The prime characters…are the mother, father,
and the speaker. As the book…reaches its final sequence…its
most important character, the speaker’s brother, who died
a suicide, by drowning, fully emerges. The strictness of the form…just
does its job, which is to give a frame, a tension, something for
the powerful emotion to work off of or against, and thus increasing
its tensions, its powerful sentiment…By writing this book…Teresa
Carson has rescued her family (as much as a family can be rescued)
and rescued her brother (as much as the drowned can be rescued).
That a book of poems can do this is a miracle. For which I am
grateful.
— From the foreword by Tom Lux
Featuring:
—The
Road to the River Blocked
—The
History of My Nightmares
— Afterwards
Teresa’s poems can also be found
in:
The Breath of Parted Lips,
Volume 2 available from www.upne.com
and the why and later
available from www.deepcleveland.com.
Teresa reading at the Cornelia Street Cafe
for launch of the why and later anthology
edited by Carly Sachs.
