This series of poems by Black Ocean Press' Poetry Editor in Chicago embodies its title perfectly as it explores the paradox of form and function in life and language. Quiet without being subdued, intelligent without being obtuse, and deeply affecting without resorting to melodrama, this book carries itself into the reader with arresting honesty and simplicity that is at once harsh and elegant. "Her spare lyrics emphasize the role of the individual surrounded with the ineffable qualities of silence and empty space: 'If there is a footnote to absence,' she writes, 'it is the beating heart.'"-Coldfront Magazine.

A Useless Window

Literature & Fiction

Adams, Carrie Olivia

Poetry

Black Ocean

Poetry. Carrie Olivia Adams delves into a space defined by air and sky, each movement another scene of a movie re-filmed many times over. INTERVENING ABSENCE, a series of sequences that question silence and interaction (and which both stand alone and themselves interact), is a work of strong architectural integrity populated by speakers whose vulnerability is extreme. Adams writes, "The poems wait, lie still. The poems creep and jump forward. The poems tense and relax their muscles. They interact with the unseen, the wished for, and the undeniably present. I can only hope that in their whispers to you they intervene." These poems calmly announce a realm of interrupted conversations with the self as moving pictures projected on parlor walls, where Adams engages the idea of pause and distance.

Intervening Absence

Ahsahta Press

Poetry. Film. Book + DVD. Immersed in the continuum between death and desire, the detective of these poems is ever at the mercy of meteorological phenomenon and outside stimuli. As she searches and reaches toward an elevated understanding (employing outdated science experiments with strings, pigeons, and tin cans, and enlisting the help of the Scientist, the Astronomer, and the Aviator along the way), she stumbles upon more questions than answers. "I don't know why this one or that one. But I know desire." A woman knows her body...until it is exploded into a multitude of Janes. A DVD of three video poems, created by the author, accompanies the book, speaking to these multitudes. The reader is initiated into the dilemma of the Janes, who staunchly proclaim, "Reader, you and I have been lashed / by the weather." "I am in love with how Carrie Olivia Adams captures the visible and the invisible, how she wonders about pinpricks and stars, possibility and fate, how she demonstrates that seasons are incidents, snowflakes are clues. Her world is one of startling moments and minutiae, the mystery of the sublime and the mystery of the everyday. Her poetry reminds us to always pay attention, to always be in awe."—Jenny Boully "Written in tandem with her short films, Carrie Olivia Adams's FORTY-ONE JANE DOE'S investigates the nature of desire and remorse through the prism of anonymity. Tuned with paradoxical introspection ('Self or selfless, / I am in the way'), Adams's lyrical sequences culminate in a savage title poem that declares, 'It is the sin in me that says I.' This bracing second collection weighs the parts of us that remain unknown, even to our confidants."—James Shea

Forty-One Jane Doe's

Poetry. Drawing on found text from a variety of historical sources, BE THE THING OF MEMORY is composed of four long poems built from erasures, specifically from the autobiography of Sophia Tolstoy, a mid-century girl scout handbook, an auditory testing guide, and writings on or by Sarah Hackett Stevenson and Alice Magaw, two of the earliest women in medicine in the United States. Part archivist, part architect, Carrie Olivia Adams excavates the stories of women --famous, forgotten, and ordinary --from history and enters into dialogue with them, giving voice to the continuity of experience and humanity that is our shared foundation. The poems move from feral fields to a dark trail in the woods to the fire of the mind while the weight of tiny things converges with the weight of story itself. Uncertainty. Disbelief. Resilience. Tell me What do you hear And with what ear do you hear it?

Be the thing of memory

Tolsun Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Adams, Carrie Olivia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Adams, Carrie Olivia

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Adams, Carrie Olivia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Useless Window

Intervening Absence

Forty-One Jane Doe's

Be the thing of memory