Mead: An Epithalamion

by Julie Carr

The central subject in Julie Carr's debut poem collection is marriage. Intimacy is examined, not only in terms of the erotic, the quotidian, and the contractual, but also in terms of the the pact between reader and writer and the blending of texts that results. Motherhood also figures as a kind of marriage-a bond that includes affective, legal, and sensual elements.

Using a variety of poetic structures―prose poems, stanzaic forms, concrete poems, fractured lyrics, direct dialogue, and discursive modes―Carr simultaneously embraces and breaks from the expected and the known, revealing the precarious balance between our desire for narrative, sequence, drama, and resolution, on the one hand, and rupture, fragment, and fracturing, on the other.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2004

Reviews

[Kent]

I'm not quite sure how this is an Epithalamion, where the lead up is, or how there is tension drawn in all the poems relating inside and outside.