The Low Passions
Poems
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
In a “trenchantly observed and moving debut” (John James, Kenyon Review), Anders Carlson-Wee mines nourishment and holiness from the darkest of our human origins.
Explosive and incantatory, The Low Passions traces the fringes of the American experiment through the eyes of a young drifter. Pathologically frugal, reckless, and vulnerable, the narrator of these viscerally compelling poems hops freight trains, hitchhikes, dumpster dives, and sleeps in the homes of total strangers, scavenging forgotten and hardscrabble places for tangible forms of faith.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The debut from Carlson-Wee (whose poem "How-To" in the Nation was the subject of controversy last year) is restless and searching, taking readers through the truck cabs, living rooms, dumpsters, freight yards, and railways of America's wide middle, a place where "Each day against all this/ breaking news, another stranger saving you." With a strong eye for fleshing out character in a few simple lines, Carlson-Wee introduces the reader to pastors, bosses, one crazy cousin in Fargo (poems about whom recur throughout the book as both comic relief and a source of despair), a "father walking into every dream," and a brother who is a burden, blessing, and companion. Violence pervades the collection, with brothers lashing out against each other both as children and adults. The kindness of strangers and the pride of a hardscrabble ethos are recurring themes, as in the poem "Pride," in which Carlson-Wee tallies the value of the food for which he's just dumpster dived while strolling through the store. Readers looking for a dose of Americana will feel like they're beside Carlson-Wee, catching "a ride from a farmer hauling a trailer/ stacked with hay bales three-high. When he asks me/ where I'm going I say as far as you can take me."
