ANGELA CARR WITHOUT CEREMONY (Book*hug)
“Angela Carr’s words in Without Ceremony point their arrows toward a ledge where communication knows “both failure and perfection at once.” Her poetry isn’t invested in naming things (perhaps this is what is unceremonious) because things, even thingness, and their energies change so rapidly. Carr creates a field of verb-rich arriving where confessional exasperations are tried and transformed in pleasurable abstraction. She summons other women poets and artists (Hesse, Dickinson, Mitchell) not to revere them but to create a queer chorus of those who can bring us to see that what seems holy is simply ordinary.” —Stacy Szymaszek, author of A Year From Today
Centred on the everyday, and crafted without preamble or pretension, the poems in Without Ceremony are a literary pastiche— a thematic mosaic not unlike tracks on an album. Amidst a timeless cast of characters from Lucretius and Eva Hesse to Joan Mitchell and St. Augustine, Carr illuminates what it means to truly know something and questions how certain knowledge becomes valued over others. Without Ceremony spotlights the gendered division of ideas and the inherent strength of language to harm and oppress, as well as elevate. Within these pages, passing encounters become rare spectacles, and the ordinary, without ambitions of grandeur or ceremony, is celebrated, making Carr’s new collection a clarifying elixir for our time. (Book*hug)