The Life
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
“An exquisite book of poetry with a lens on motherhood that’s existential, funny and tender.” —Elle
Acclaimed poet Carrie Fountain deepens her exploration of the domestic in a new collection of playful and wise poems
The poems in Carrie Fountain's third collection, The Life, exist somewhere, as Rilke says, between “our daily life” and “the great work”—an interstitial space where sidelong glances live alongside shouts to heaven. In elegant, colloquial language, Fountain observes her children dressing themselves in fledgling layers of personhood, creating their own private worlds and personalities, and makes room for genuine marvels in the midst of routine. Attuned to the delicate, fleeting moments that together comprise a life, these poems offer a guide by which to navigate the signs and symbols, and to pilot if not the perfect life, the only life, the life we are given.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The spectacular third book from Fountain (Burn Lake) reveals a young mother's cluttered life and a glimmering world of faith shaken, stirred, and movingly reaffirmed: "God, sometimes I step/ into this life like stepping into a room// I can't remember why I entered, and for/ a moment I see nothing—I can see nothing,// I can see it, a space in front of me that is not yet/ filled, that could be filled, and will be filled." Every poem is a marvel of craft; Fountain displays exquisite judgment, with each image, figure, question, paradox, snippet of overheard conversation, and philosophical meditation finding its perfect place. The effect is quietly exhilarating. Humor and heartbreak intertwine often, finding their counterpoint in revelations about this "inadequate world": "I want to know/ what is holy—I do. But first I want/ the rat to die," she says, and later, "Childhood is so/ perfect, the way the rules,/ if unbent, can bear/ the weight of the structure/ and protect the little creatures/ still forming inside it." Through the alchemy of honest inquiry and clever wordplay ("I pretend sometimes. Other// times, all I do is pretend"), Fountain makes good on the transformative promise of poetry, "making one/ thing become another" in this remarkable work.
