After losing her sister to heart failure, Karen Finneyfrock was unable to write poems for three years. Her voice came back, whispering at first, then screaming. Ceremony for the Choking Ghost contains the sound of that voice returning, bringing poems about grief and its effect on the body, the body politic, memory and, of course, poems about love. From the intensely personal, "How My Family Grieved,” to the political, "What Lot's Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn't a Pillar of Salt),” Finneyfrock engages the reader with the chiseled images of a precise storyteller.
Ceremony for the Choking Ghost
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle.
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Review
Finneyfrock writes poetry with muscular verve and narrative push. The depth and breadth suggested in just a few polished images placed next to each other will make you reconsider what poetry can do. -Paul Constant, editor The Stranger
If you've never enjoyed poetry once in your whole life-if even the word "poetry" makes you want to fall asleep, or die-you should read Karen Finneyfrock's new book of poetry, Ceremony for the Choking Ghost. -Paul Constant, editor The Stranger
...Finneyfrock's poems, then, are Shields's perfect novels: a shelf full of long, elaborate, heartfelt books that have been whittled down to their bare, sharp skeletons. -Paul Constant, editor "The Stranger”
If you've never enjoyed poetry once in your whole life-if even the word "poetry" makes you want to fall asleep, or die-you should read Karen Finneyfrock's new book of poetry, Ceremony for the Choking Ghost. -Paul Constant, editor The Stranger
...Finneyfrock's poems, then, are Shields's perfect novels: a shelf full of long, elaborate, heartfelt books that have been whittled down to their bare, sharp skeletons. -Paul Constant, editor "The Stranger”
About the Author
Karen Finneyfrock is a poet, novelist and teaching artist in Seattle, WA. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Richard Hugo House in Seattle and teaches for Seattle Arts and Lectures' Writers-in-the-Schools program. A member of four National Poetry Slam Teams, Karen has toured across the US and Canada reading poetry in bars, coffee shops, theatres and the occasional living room. Karen was honored as a "Slam Legend” at the National Poetry Slam in 2006.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Karen Finneyfrock is a poet, novelist and teaching artist in Seattle, WA. Her second book of poems, Ceremony for the Choking Ghost, was released on Write Bloody press in 2010. Her young adult novel, Celia, the Dark and Weird, is due from Viking Children's Books, a division of Penguin Group USA in Spring 2012. She is a Writer-in-Residence at Richard Hugo House in Seattle and teaches for Seattle Arts and Lectures' Writers-in-the-Schools program. In 2010, Karen traveled to Nepal as a Cultural Envoy through the US Department of State to perform and teach poetry and in 2011, she did a reading tour in Germany sponsored by the US Embassy.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This Book= Awesome,
This review is from: Ceremony for the Choking Ghost: Poems by Karen Finneyfrock (Paperback)
I enjoyed this book the whole way through. It was sad, funny, and everything in between. Reading this book will make you a better person. Smarter too!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From a poet's grief: poignancy and empathy,
This review is from: Ceremony for the Choking Ghost: Poems by Karen Finneyfrock (Paperback)
Karen Finneyfrock's Ceremony for the Choking Ghost provides a profoundly poignant record of the poet's reaction to her sister's death from unexplained heart failure at age thirty-six. Karen's grief and raw vulnerability render her speechless, shellshocked, nearly debilitated. She battles to stay emotionally afloat, succumbing at times, but more often than not emerging more deeply empathetic to others' grief. "How to Recognize a Damaged Girl," for example, so tellingly relates the essential images of her poem's subjects: "Eyeliner" and "mimic shiners" and "acrylic nails and fishnets." And there is the poet's trademark gift for simile and metaphor: "Cigarettes hang off their lips/like bridge jumpers who change their minds."The poet also reveals her vulnerability in matters of romance. In the hilarious "Miss You," Karen wants to push away a lover who broke with and disappointed her, yet her heart goes "jackhammer" and "carousel" when he whispers he misses her. She seems almost angry at her vulnerability to such a man's charms--yet she expiates her longing through finely sarcastic delineation of the man's truncated acknowledgement, "Miss you." By poem's end, she feels less dependent on his good graces. She will "fold" his nostalgic words and put them "in my purse. I might be hungry later." Such wit and sarcasm find other expressions here, as one would expect from one of our country's finest performance poets. Indeed, Ceremony begins with the fire and brimstone of "What Lot's Wife Would Have Said (If She Were Not a Pillar of Salt)." The poem excoriates the self-serving sanctimony of religious bigots who equate gays with decadence. Elsewhere in the collection, the poet makes clear she is proud of her friendship with gay people. In "Rebecca and Her Lover Ate Oysters," a lesbian couple finds a pearl in an oyster among those they ordered in a restaurant. Waiters and patrons both celebrate the rare occurrence. The poet, presumably still grieving over her sister's death, pointedly refers to God at poem's end: "Here is the reason, for one more day/to keep vainly believing God loves us." The poet sounds uncertain about God's love yet totally sincere celebrating others' joy in the couple's finding the pearl. This is turn reflects her hope for an inclusive divinity--a God who loves gays as well as straights; blacks as well as whites; women as well as men; poor as well as rich; indeed, every "necessary shining child." Karen demonstrates compassion and hints her compassion might be linked to such a God. The emotional complexity of poems such as "Rebecca and Her Lover Ate Oysters" suggests Karen Finneyfrock's impressive maturation since the publication of her promising first collection, Welcome to the Butterfly House. Here are warmth and love--without false comfort. Yes, this is a brave voice--not as in feigned bravado but as in quiet acknowledgement of flaw and insecurity and weakness, and the redemption that accrues to those honest about them.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"like seeing a seagull in a grocery store",
By
This review is from: Ceremony for the Choking Ghost: Poems by Karen Finneyfrock (Paperback)
Karen Finneyfrock knows the disorientation of grief, "like seeing a seagull in the grocery store," firsthand. Her sister Beth died at age 36, while waiting for a heart transplant. In her poem "The Man on Television," Finneyfrock offers a gesture, a call, a song of understanding toward a man newly bereft, and by extension, toward all of us who know what it means to lose those we love.Dear pigeon in the drugstore, at night when grief turns your breath black, and you breathe it alone among cereal boxes and medication, resist breaking a wing on the windows. Every lock is made with a key. (Hear Karen Finneyfrock reading the poem on KUOW public radio at [...].) These are poems of the most necessary kind of understanding--one human heart speaking to another about what can barely be contained by words.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
