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In Imperfect Prayers, we are invited to overhear answered and
unanswered prayers in all their keen and flint-edged edginess. Sharp,
pointed, the poems confront the sacred and the profane and find them
often to be made of the same elements, the same common dust. As in
moments in John Donne and St. John of the Cross, you can almost imagine
the poet is picking a fight with his divine beloved, double-daring the
God to act, to be known, to show his hand. The mode here is not
devotional, but confrontational, a contemporary Jacob wrestling with the
questions of the flesh and the spirit.
Richard Carr has discovered that, when it comes to wrestling with the
facts of our matter, one must not blink, nor hedge one's bets, nor
ignore the suffering in the midst of beauty, the beauty in the midst of
suffering. Neither glib dismissal nor giddy swoon, these poems perform
a serious coming to grips with the God Who Is. This is unusual and
compelling theodicy, and—I daresay—efficacious prayer.
Richard Carr's ten-line Imperfect Prayers are not religious
poems. They are late-night cries for mercy, meditations on the
spiritual truths of grocery shopping and dental procedures, and maddened
love letters to the creator of constellations and children without
limbs. As Jacob wrestled with the angel, this poet struggles toward
intimacy with a mysterious, sometimes infuriating God, confessing that
"[he] will never comprehend him." Comprehension—perhaps not. But with
the creator "cupping both his hands over [the poet's] fist and jittery
pen," Carr searches for God—and, I believe, finds him—in a frozen lake,
a buzzing cicada, a flickering computer screen: "everywhere his
unbearable odor and love." |
1. God tells me to make poems about his creation, green lakes with acres of blue sky, the sudden boiling of thunderheads, also bricks, the two-story storefront, the gift shop with its candles and little boxes of stationery, the bistro next door, monochromatic, unfriendly in daylight, and the piles of uncollected garbage in the alley, twenty-seven bags attracting only three flies so far who buzz loops in the air in their joy, and I will fly loops in the sky. 2. 3. 4. |
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Richard Carr's brilliant fifth book, One Sleeve,
collects all the resonating themes of his earlier work, turbocharges
them, and demands that the reader, stripped of all pretense, illusion,
and self-pity, face the human condition of our time. From these
dark poems shine great beauty and a strange, tentative-yet-tough
kindness, while simile and lyricism transform each poem into a mythology
that is both frightening and comforting. Carr's narrator picks scabs off his philosophical
wounds while his alter ego, "One Sleeve," attempts to make sense of a
fractured universe. "Irony is the new certainty," declares Carr's
ambivalent speaker, caught between the physical sensations and
philosophical problems of this world and the next. The very first poem announces that Carr will not be
playing by the rules. "He thinks of himself in the third person /
except sometimes when he talks. // I talk between people. / I aim for
the space between passersby." Breaking the rules allows the
narrator to speak with/as a protean voice that makes him always
multiple, inciting us—we passersby—into remaining, like One Sleeve,
"awake, counting beams of snowlight / hovering in the slats of the
blinds." |
One
Sleeve Is
Not Afraid
of Death One Sleeve is not afraid of death. It's the state of nonbeing after death that troubles him. One Sleeve will miss having himself around. I'm going to miss having Beethoven around, LP records, old piano scores, the clok clok of the metronome, my hand twitching like a dead insect. My room too small for a piano, too quiet for music, I no longer play. And so the heart quits beating. The blood stops flowing. The brain ceases to compute and command. Without stimulus or impulse, the light of the mind scatters. The sparks of the evening's last firework fall. In darkness lie memories in motionless pools, unremembered. The fingers stop twitching. One Sleeve is afraid of this. I Look
Down the Subway
Stair in the Rain |
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Richard
Carr's Ace is a gorgeously sad novel-in-verse. In a series
of intimate 14-line poems, Carr follows the tragic love story of Ace and
Carol, a love story born of junkyards. The poet carefully rescues
and polishes discarded lives, gives voice and dignity to the
disastrously troubled. Ace is emotionally complex, honest,
and deftly crafted. —Denise Duhamel Ace offers us four vividly wrought
characters bound together by the ineffable yet invincible ties of
family. While all the lives here are "a blur of failure" in one
sense or another, each is nonetheless haunted by "the fog and debris of
lingering possibility"—possibility of love, of forgiveness, of
redemption—even after death. In this beautifully rendered
sequence, the gifted Richard Carr proves himself not only a superb poet
but a first-class storyteller, keeping us turning the pages with
admiration and gratitude. |
Auto Parts I started my search for him in the salvage yard in and around the junked cars and vans somehow all the same color and sprouting the same yellow weed imagining him already grown into a boy and playing where I played climbing the stacked wrecks keenly for the view across the rail yard and down to the river though I was not so sentimental that I would go to a playground looking for my daughter on the swings for of course I knew the girl and knew she was old enough to be in a bar drinking working whatever whereas I had never met her son and so thought of him in a state of joy a grandson among the auto parts. Seed
of Fire |
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Richard
Carr is a genius of poetry. Unknown—until now—he has been writing
at white heat, producing five books in the past four years, three of
which won prizes in 2007-2008: Mister Martini, the Vassar Miller Prize;
Honey, the Gival Press Poetry Award; and Ace, the Washington Prize.
All three characters—Mister Martini, Honey, and Ace—originate here in
Street Portraits, among the heartbreaking portrayals of "all the
monochrome denizens of the / neon honking steaming street." —Barbara Louise Ungar With a roving poet's eye, Carr penetrates
the hearts and minds of others to reveal these astonishing "street
portraits," little snapshots of the human soul. These deft,
empathic poems are remarkable for their insight and range of tone. I thought I was writing the best poetry in America, until I read
Richard Carr. |
Eagle His hair is like an eagle's nest, huge and messy. The rest of him is thin, though still hard-knuckled. Spiders in the cracks of the pavement mock him. He speaks in short bursts as though commanding a dog, except there is no voice. Then the mouth stops moving, and his eyes turn upward, green tarnished black around the edges. His field jacket is buttoned all the way up, the left pocket torn down. I do not salute him. He cups his hands to receive my charity. Frankie's
Kiss |
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This
sequence of compact poems is musically subtle, visually surprising...deeply moving. More than this, though,
Honey is an ambitious,
intricately unified book, part brilliant lyrical meditation and part
surreal Bildungsroman. In it, Richard Carr creates a character whose
search for truth and self (accompanied by the Bearded Lady, the Poet,
the Boy, and the Hapax) is delightful and ambiguous. Honey
is a poetry collection unlike any you're likely to encounter. It
is a wonderful, breathtaking achievement. —Kevin Prufer
Honey is a
tour de force. Comprised of 100 electrifying microsonnets, Richard
Carr's invention recalls Berryman's Dreamsongs, for brilliance and
wit... Open to any page: language and image startle and
delight, like "Einstein's blown-fuse hairdo." You can always tell a poet by the company his poems keep. On my
poetry shelf Richard Carr's Honey will find itself a near neighbor to
the books of Russell Edson, Charles Simic, James Tate, and Bill Knott. They may be
"strange to the bees," but they will, I predict, become familiar to
you... Honey explodes the mundane and visits the extraordinary in
extraordinary ways. |
LXXXIII I gather to my cheekbones crabapple blossoms drenched in a cold drizzle. I lick violets, kneeling obscenely, and draw yellow dandelion heads into my mouth. I want to taste what the bee tastes, nectar and pollen, but more, her chemical imprint, footprints on the petals, to learn where she has been, what orchards and nurseries, gardens, graves— and if she ever blushes. XLIX LVIII |
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A good
poem can be compared to a good drink—both will leave you with good
taste, both will leave with something to reflect on, and both will leave
you the slightest bit intoxicated. Mister Martini follows
this analogy and reflects upon the relationship between father and son,
the journey from youth to facing death, all written in a beautiful style
by prolific poet Richard Carr. —Midwest Book Review Carr's Mister Martini is full of ferocious poems,
each one uncoiling on the page like a bullwhip. He treats the
father and son with both unsentimental intensity and powerful humanity.
This is a truly original book. There's nothing extra: sharp
and clear and astonishing. In nearly
three decades of working as a poet, Carr
has now blended a powerful concoction of resonant
imagination. Sip each poem in Mister Martini and discover
how each poem plays off the other, yet each can stand on its own.
Be warned, however, that as easily as one martini may follow another
into drunken revelry, these tart poems may intoxicate and linger. |
Inventor My father was an inventor of martinis. He acquired archaic languages, collected Renaissance textiles. But mostly he made martinis. He worked at night in a closed room. § Martini chilled among purple crocuses, served with two drops of spring snow gathered from the petals. Atoms Organ |
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| Copyright © 2008-11 Richard Carr |
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