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Virtual Event – Carrie Fountain
May 3, 2021 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Magic City Books is proud to welcome Carrie Fountain for a virtual author event in celebration of her new poetry collection, The Life.
The poems in Carrie Fountain’s third collection, The Life, exist somewhere, as Rilke says, between our daily life and the great work–an interstitial space where sidelong glances live alongside shouts to heaven.
Carrie will be joined in conversation by the poet Naomi Shihab Nye.
This free event will be hosted on the Zoom platform and Facebook Live. To register in advance for the event on Zoom, visit: https://magiccitybooks.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iTtYtZZSSVGvoA2_h486kg.
The Life by Carrie Fountain is available now. To order a copy visit Magic City Books in person or online: https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/the-life/484.
About The Life
An acclaimed poet deepens her exploration of the domestic in a new collection of playful and wise poems.
The poems in Carrie Fountain’s third collection, The Life, exist somewhere, as Rilke says, between our daily life and the great work–an interstitial space where sidelong glances live alongside shouts to heaven. In elegant, colloquial language, Fountain observes her children dressing themselves in fledgling layers of personhood, creating their own private worlds and personalities, and makes room for genuine marvels in the midst of routine. Attuned to the delicate, fleeting moments that together comprise a life, these poems offer a guide by which to navigate the signs and symbols, and to pilot if not the perfect life, the only life, the life we are given.
Carrie Fountain‘s poems have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, and The New Yorker, among others. She is the author of the poetry collections Burn Lake, a National Poetry Series winner, and Instant Winner, along with the young adult novel I’m Not Missing. Born and raised in Mesilla, New Mexico, Fountain received her MFA as a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Currently writer in residence at St. Edward’s University, she lives in Austin with her husband, playwright and novelist Kirk Lynn, and their two children.
Advance Praise for The Life
“Carrie Fountain has done it again–and again, I’m in awe, like a kid watching a magician and hoping to understand the tricks. How, reading this book, can I be so grounded in the life–its paper valentines, its grocery runs, its dead pet fish that “flash like money one last time / before vanishing down the drain”–but also be taken elsewhere, beyond? In poems that explore motherhood, selfhood, marriage, faith and belief, and the deep loneliness of being human, Fountain celebrates love and family while also acknowledging that we are traveling alone toward wherever it is we are going: “It is unbearable, and though / it is unbearable, I bear it.” Perhaps, as she writes, there is no such thing as perfect, only “good enough,” but The Life seems evidence to the contrary. To me this book is perfect.” –Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones and Keep Moving
“With its wonder at daily living, The Life lures you into its quiet world only to ignite in abundance, ferocity, and the aching truth of survival. Fountain’s stunning poems illuminate the complexities of motherhood and marriage with a clear, lyrical voice that speaks to us all.” –Ada Limón, author of The Carrying
“Life here has been caught, still squirming, on poet Fountain’s lines. She lets her haul go, releases and casts another line, one after another, big and little fish, small or wild or turning lines. Each catch released as if the fisher forgot her hunger for a split second and it came back, ravenous for her. This poet’s voice works the way any great art works: so beautiful it hurts maybe too much that it seems dangerous. But it’s not like ‘any great art’– it’s this one book, this voice, this life, the only one we have. And this book changed it.” –Brenda Shaughnessy, author of The Octopus Museum
“As the poet herself (mother, teacher, partner, citizen) must, these poems begin in chaotic dailiness, then swerve into sudden clarity of attention. They stun with pleasurable, often funny, at times devastating recognition. A single life, of one struggling, searching being, becomes “the” life: what is despite our differences common. We can all recognize each other and ourselves in these marvelous poems.” –Matthew Zapruder, author of Father’s Day
