Viper rum / by Mary Karr ; with the afterword "Against decoration."

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Karr, Mary.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

78 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Penguin Poets, 2001.

Summary:

Most readers know Mary Karr as the author of the widely acclaimed and bestselling memoirs The Liars' Club and Cherry. But before those two books, Karr won praise as a poet whose "bracing, tight-lipped" poems "take on the bedevilments of fate and grief with a diabolical edge of their own" (Poetry). Karr's third collection portrays personal catharsis in many guises -- sexual, familial, spiritual. Various beloveds are birthed and buried in precise, touching lyrics. Also here is Karr's prize-winning essay "Against Decoration," which set off a national controversy when first published in Parnassus. In it, Karr takes aim against verbal ornament and "the high-brow doily making" that too often passes for poetry these days.

Contents:

Viper Rum 1

Incant Against Suicide 3

The Wife of Jesus Speaks 4

The Last of the Brooding Miserables 6

Four of the Horsemen (Hypertense and Stroke, Coronary Occlusion and Cerebral Insult) 8

Hubris 10

The Patient 11

Adieu 12

Beauty and the Shoe Sluts 13

Field of Skulls 14

Summons (or This Won't Hurt You A Bit and It'll Cheer Me Up) 16

Requiem for the New Year 17

The Grand Miracle 18

Mr. D. Refuses the Blessing 20

Terminus 21

Limbo: Altered States 22

The Pallbearer 24

The Century's Worst Blizzard 25

Revenge of the Ex-Mistress 28

Dead Drunk (or The Monster-Maker at Work) 29

Animistic Anatomy 31

Mall Crawl 32

Christ's Passion 33

Domestic Ruins 35

The Invention of God in a Mouthful of Milk 36

County Fair 37

Belongings 39

Lifecycle Stairmaster 40

Chosen Blindness 43

Afterword: Against Decoration 49.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references (page 73) and index.

ISBN:

081121382X

9780811213820

0142000183

9780142000182

OCLC:

48077826