This collection of poems is striking in its powerful representation of humanity and its dramatic use of language. Anne Caston explores the inner recesses of the human mind and body, delving into the murky shadows where individuals fear to tread. The poems consider the nature of death, love, brutality, friendship, and much more. Caston plays with different points of view and keeps readers on their toes. The physicality of these moving and disturbing poems is sure to captivate lovers of poetry.
I am an Associate Professor of Creative Writing/Poetry and teach in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I currently have two collections of poetry in print: Flying Out With The Wounded (New York University Press, 1997) and Judah's Lion (Toad Hall Press, 2009, second edition). My writing often pulls from my experiences as a former nurse, as a mother of four, and as a Southern woman who was raised among Southern Baptists. The latter is especially true in two new books I'm currently working on: The Empress of Longing (poetry) and Deep Dixie: A Southerner's Take On Life, Romance, Faith, Friendship, Family, And Coming-of-Age Among Southern Baptists (memoir). Seems I am always "taking on God" for one thing or another, both in life and in the writing.
My husband, who is an aerospace engineer, is my first reader on almost everything I write and he is a tough critic, particularly since he prefers "hard science" over anything "creative." He's the one who has nudged (okay, shoved) me into writing the memoir after having listened to me recount the anecdotes and tales of my life over the last 15 years of our married life. He thinks it's all very funny - and isn't that always the risk of writing as a Southerner: it all comes out sounding like some kind of deep tragicomedy, and by "tragicomedy" I mean that a Southerner's daily little "tragedies" always end up sounding like comedy when you begin talking or writing about them to someone else.
Maybe that's how many Southern women end up with such a riotous sense of humor: we learn to laugh at others first and then at ourselves.
Ian and I recently moved to Pennsylvania (from Alaska) where we bought an old farmhouse and have begun renovating it: a real money-pit of a project that should keep us laughing or crying for the next 15 years of married life. We share our home with two boy-cats (one older than sin and diabetic who just keeps hanging on to the good life) and - when we're really fortunate - enjoy visits from our grown children and their families. It makes for a sweet life to set alongside the somewhat more compelling and unnerving writing in those first books. It take both, I suspect, to make something like a full life.
