Poems by听, assistant professor of English
Set to the music of rain, these shattered elegies seek communion in the ethereal place between birth and death.
In the wake of a mother鈥檚 battle with Alzheimer鈥檚 and a child鈥檚 impending birth, Julie Carr gathers the shards of both mourning and joy to give readers poems that encompass it all: 鈥淶ebra and xylophone cyclone and sorrow.鈥 Here she says, 鈥淪ince I lost her I stored her like ore in my / form as if later I鈥檇 find her, restore her,鈥 giving voice to the longing that accompanies life鈥檚 most profound losses and its most anticipated arrivals.
鈥淎s Carr shuttles among her triple roles as mother, daughter, writer, individual words and phonemes shuttle back and forth like classical melodies.鈥
鈥擯ublishers Weekly
鈥淎s a reader, I feel included a lot in Julie Carr鈥檚 hard and beautiful book. I can pretty much hear its author speak鈥攁 whispering that enables us into its world 鈥 a masterfully sutured journey, painfully useful. 鈥楽arah鈥擮f Fragments and Lines鈥 is a book I know I will return to. And urge it on my friends who have lives too and write in them.鈥
鈥擡ileen Myles, National Poetry Series judge
鈥淸Julie Carr鈥檚] lyrical style expresses the complex and often frustrating experience of being human: of constantly thinking, feeling, being, and changing.鈥
鈥擯owell鈥檚 Books
鈥淐arr鈥檚 is clearly a voice of tender lyricism and much intimacy, yet it is never obscure.鈥
鈥擫ibrary Journal
鈥淛ulie Carr鈥檚 harrowing new book is composed of a complex music of grief and fragmentation that illuminates the fragile distance between mothers and daughters. To read 鈥楽arah鈥擮f Fragments and Lines鈥 is to recall once again that memory might just be the singular attribute of being human and that there can be no poetics of daily life that does not confront loss. Such is the domain of love; such is the vocation of poetry.鈥
鈥擯eter Gizzi
鈥淏irth and death elegantly do their听pas de deux听as daughter and mother in 鈥楽arah鈥擮f Fragments and Lines,鈥 by Julie Carr, who was selected by Eileen Myles for the National Poetry Series. Sarah is the first matriarch in the Torah and her eternity is fused here with our mortality. 鈥楾he body鈥檚 a hole through which other bodies move.鈥 The poems are composed of fragments, lines, and abstracts that leave spaces for the 鈥減illaged language鈥 to make new connections. Lyrically a Contralto, Carr鈥檚 music is deeply resounding.鈥
鈥擝rooklyn Rail