
“In the lava flows of Vesuvius and on the slopes of the volcanic range of Oregon, Chuck Carlise maps out the history of personal loss in such evocative detail and with such tender regard for the fragility of the present, that we, too, are caught unaware and overwhelmed by the ‘nervous erasure’ of grief. What does one unearth from such a Pompeii? Objects of beauty, shards of hope. Obsidian. Paintings on the brothel walls. A bouquet of lace. Reminders of the way in which memory endures. ‘An unbroken field of blue.’”
— D. A. Powell, Kingsley Tufts Award Winner for Chronic: Poems
Reviews & Other Notes:
The opposite of a contributor’s copy: A Broken Escalator Still Isn’t the Stairs
Friday, September 30, 2011
In the mail today came a chapbook by Chuck Carlise with the seriously awesome title of A Broken Escalator Still Isn’t the Stairs. And you know what? As great as the title is, the book is even better.
This chapbook won the 2010 Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook Award. I entered that contest, too, and (duh) didn’t win, which is why I received the book in the mail. Now when you don’t win a contest, and then you see the book that did win, you often grumble to yourself that your book was far more deserving (by “you” here, I mean, of course, “I”). Well, though I still (immodestly) think my manuscript was pretty darn deserving, too, I certainly can’t feel too bad about being overshadowed by this series of prose poems.
— Amorak Huey, author of Boom Box and Ha Ha Ha Thump
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