{"title":"Carolyn Smart","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"breath-taking-book-carolyn-smart-9781771669863","title":"Breath Taking","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn unflinching and tender recollection of illness, death, and grief, sensitively exploring the dynamic between the burden of care and the burden of dying.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eCarolyn Smart's latest poetry collection offers a striking meditation on the death of her partner of nearly forty years. Structured in five distinct parts, this deeply moving book unfolds like a tragedy--each section like an act in a play, the individual poems key scenes in a shared life coming to an end.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe language in \u003ci\u003eBreath Taking\u003c\/i\u003e is direct and exacting, with colloquial phrases that animate and complicate the emotional pressure of the work itself. Familiar references are scattered throughout--Gould Lake, Road 38--not as a device, but as indications of the everyday world that love, pain, and death inhabit.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIntimate and exhaustive, this generous document doesn't lean on a belief in God or the afterlife, nor does nature's continuity offer an uncomplicated source of comfort. Instead, what is revealed is the unvarnished reality of love and loss--the arduous responsibilities, the fragile attempts at recovery, the wishful thinking that what is gone will one day return. \u003ci\u003eBreath Taking\u003c\/i\u003e is a profound, vital reflection on the end of a life, and on those who go on living.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ BOOKAZINE","offer_id":54599032537361,"sku":"NBZ9781771669863","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":54655053955345,"sku":"NIN9781771669863","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781771669863.jpg?v=1789817525"},{"product_id":"careen-book-carolyn-smart-9781771313827","title":"Careen","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eRemember Bonnie \u0026amp; Clyde? A complex, dramatic rendering of a familiar story made new.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are the stuff of legend--why tell their story again? Chances are you don't know the nuances--their love story and that of their accomplices Buck Barrow and his wife Blanche; their aspirations, conflicts and prayerful natures; and ultimately the sources of their tragedy. At its core, \u003ci\u003eCareen\u003c\/i\u003e is a long poem spoken by the characters, though the voices are companioned by newspaper articles often ironically at odds with the inside story. Smart lets the principal actors relate their own tale--a book of voices speaking out of the desperate dirty thirties.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"we come shinin from the tray as real as fleshed-out fine-boned forms\u003cbr\u003e even our shoes flashin, we are some fun jokers\u003cbr\u003e are not coarse, cannot lie, do not limp or bleed\u003cbr\u003e are kind \u0026amp; funny, desperately in love\u003cbr\u003e we are you but better, no denyin\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003efix us there, that moment when you like us, want to be like us\"\u003cbr\u003e --from \"like us: the photographs left behind at Joplin\"\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for Carolyn Smart:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"always moving, sometimes chilling \"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e--University of Toronto Quarterly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"[Smart] understands loneliness in all its forms, and writes with a clarity and compassion that is powerfully affecting.\"\u003cb\u003e--Anne Michaels\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":67615490015505,"sku":"NLS9781771313827","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781771313827.jpg?v=1790906207"},{"product_id":"hooked-book-carolyn-smart-9781894078696","title":"Hooked","description":"Poetry. HOOKED is a stunning new collection of seven poems about seven famous or infamous women: Myra Hindley, Unity Mitford, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dora Carrington, Carson McCullers, Jane Bowles, and Elizabeth Smart. Each of these women was hooked on, and her life contorted by, an addiction or obsession. Here we have seven variations on the insoluble conundrum of sexuality--each in a remarkably distinct, authentic voice. Carolyn Smart brilliantly recreates seven lives of great color. These women, all born before the end of World War II, struggle to find--or escape--their roles in a society hostile to female intelligence and ambition. Here are the agonies of the half-lived life; talents and voices that are lost or go astray in seven different ways, at a time before the greater freedoms that Feminism brought to the Western World. Whether these women have artistic success or not they are, in these astonishing poems, devastatingly articulate about their difficult lives.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":67615536677137,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":67615537529105,"sku":"NLS9781894078696","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781894078696.jpg?v=1790906519"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-carolyn-smart.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}