the rose concordance

In The Rose Concordance, Angela Carr sets up the rules for a game and then breaks them. The poems trace a constellation of fountains, whose waters lap from an erotic medieval poem. Luxury rushes headlong into Felony, Love hears Irony in Ecstasy. Like fountains, these poems resist any one enduring shape or reading. For in Carr’s voice, water is dappled, and wind catches the fountain and moves it sideways at night when no one is looking. In the mist of words, complicity is vilified and the precious is tenderly chided. The Rose Concordance is a fountain garden that invites the reader to tarry, and drink.

AUTHOR

Angela Carr

ANGELA CARR is the author of three previous poetry collections, including Here in There (shortlisted for the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry), The Rose Concordance, and Ropewalk (shortlisted for the McAuslan First Book Prize). Angela has also translated poetry books by Nicole Brossard (Ardour) and Chantal Neveu (Coït). She studied Creative Writing and Literature at Concordia University in Montreal and later earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Montreal. She currently resides in New York City, where she teaches Literary Studies at the New School University.

Reviews

“It is as though Carr’s language has erupted from a fountain and into the air. She lets the wind take hold of it, bend it slightly, push it aside, but sometimes the wind relinquishes and just lets the language flow. Her language is smooth but sometimes stutters, fluctuating from long lines of prose to short stichic bursts. It repeats, shifts, or departs completely from lines before, resulting in a beautiful, challenging and worthwhile read.” —Broken Pencil

“Carr achieves an exquisite balance of sensual fleshiness, confession and conceptual abstraction… A rare pleasure.” —The Globe and Mail

“Through repetition, fragmentation, and translation, Carr makes texts, bodies, and buildings pliable.” —Canadian Literature