RichardCarr.info

Ace		TOP
Available at Amazon	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. —Christopher Conlon	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 I imagined my grandson growing brilliantly a seed of fire sizzling and sparking loudly becoming Little Ace by falling face first onto the sidewalk and getting up each time another year older still crying maybe but starting to scar over while behind the white tissue his first primitive plan took shape to run away and handle things on his own appreciating early his destiny that he would siphon from the gas tank of life unaware of my poor example and long days on the street though it is possible he has seen me at the roadside when I lift the hood of my car to examine the silence.
Street Portraits		TOP
Available at Amazon	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. —David Hassler I thought I was writing the best poetry in America, until I read Richard Carr. —Stuart Bartow	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 She photographs the homeless joyfully. Like a butterfly collector gathering specimens, she captures their upturned faces. The images are beautiful in their stillness, the eyes—just the orbs of the eyes— gone blurry in the chloroform of halted time. At the appointed hour I meet her by the opening of an alley. She emerges victorious, and I become suddenly thirsty looking at her smile, an empty brown bag: coffee and nicotine color her large, square teeth. But I love her kiss—her stiff, gritty lips, the way her tongue reaches in, trying to drink from my mouth, guzzling nothing. She laughs and of course I am like one of her subjects, a stuttering old man exposing himself to her.
Honey		TOP
Available at Amazon	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." —Barbara Louise Ungar 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... —William Slaughter Honey explodes the mundane and visits the extraordinary in extraordinary ways. —Kathleen Volk Miller	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 The Bearded Lady is a relentless, intricate friend. Dance-drunk, she kneels in sickness. A well-constructed chamber of suffering protects her from further hurt. Her limestone eyes are soft after years of rain. She goes home to a bed made of bricks and dreams of exotic goats who flaunt their pretty ribbons and precious locks and flick their gray tongues indecently. LVIII We are strange to the bees, prismatic and myriad, like droplets of sun and rain colliding in the misty blue vistas of their heaven, though profusion means everything to the sapient hive, and they love the musical hairstyles of flowers, minuet, gavotte, even poorly imitated in our droning art.
Mister Martini		TOP
Available at Amazon	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. —W.T. Pfefferle This is a truly original book. There's nothing extra: sharp and clear and astonishing. —Naomi Shihab Nye 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. —David Hulm	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 We were like atoms smashed together creating dazzling light and destruction. § Martini made of tears squeezed from the eyes of pimps. Organ He wanted his eyes cryogenically preserved in separate tanks, his friends among the organ farmers untrustworthy and powerful. § Martini displayed in a bell jar, the hollow-pupiled olive whitening with age.
Copyright © 2008-10 Richard Carr		TOP