Lost and Local by Carol Ellis

Lost and Local by Carol Ellis

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Edited by Suzanne Lummis. Leaving the theater I stand outside in a dark of black lipstick the world wears when everyone leaves. Language like this--savory, sensuous and ripe with the unexpected--is among Carol Ellis' strengths, along with an intelligence that converts the ordinary into the wild and the strange. They pour from her, these poems, not in the form of stories exactly, narrative, but in a profusion of responses to the world, the seen, the experienced and the imagined. Thunder. The dogs bark. The gods are angry say those who believe in gods. The gods are always angry or out in the back alley by the dumpster smoking a cigarette. Reader, think of Carol Ellis' poems this way: like stepping into the realm of dreams, but dreams wittier and more sumptuous than those that favor most of us each night.

Carol Ellis lives in Portland, Oregon, and is a poet. She has a PhD in English from the University of Iowa (her dissertation was on the poet James Wright) and a master's degree in English and creative writing from San Francisco State University, where she studied with Robert Creeley and Ed Dorn. HELLO (Two Plum Press, 2018) and I Want a Job (Finishing Line Press, 2014) are Carol's two chapbooks. Her poems and essays have appeared in publications such as ZYZZYVA, Comstock Review, The Cincinnati Review, Saranac Review, and Cider Press Review, among others. Carol has taught at Saginaw Valley State University, University of Redlands, California State University, San Bernardino, Claremont Graduate University, University of California at Merced, and The Attic in Portland. Carol spent 2015 in Cuba, where she wrote a book and gave readings.