Lip

by Kathy Fagan

In this stunning fourth collection, Kathy Fagan expands her ongoing engagement of voice and persona across the borders of both traditional and experimental poetic lines. A book of monologues, portraits, and arias, Lip directs our attention to the sometimes literal ropes and pulleys of the human stage, those operating just out of sight and earshot: the understructure and the undervoice. Fagan's speakers--historical, anonymous, and often subversively female--hold forth, hold back, enfold and unleash in forms as multiply textured as their experience. Always, hovering at the mouth of the vessel, in the margin of speech, is lip: anatomical and botanical, sexual and slang, servile and insolent.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2009

Reviews

[Nicole Hardina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fagan's voice is powerful and direct. She indicts almost everyone, but never the reader. I love the way she is both gentle and caustic at once, as in:

But in the ritual movement / of three PM she is an errant woodwind / outside the score. Where did it go, the good you / believed was inside everything? She's thrown it / down. She won't carry your faith on her back.

(from "Three, Becoming Spring")

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

The language in this collection is pretty fantastic--saucy and hip and cool. The poems are smart and witty and often unsettle themselves. A lovely read.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, smart, funny, steeped in influences both high and low, Kathy Fagan's poems show us a dazzling, sometimes frightening world that both demands and rewards our careful attention.