Sinners Welcome

by Mary Karr

Overview

“What gives Sinners Welcome its sharp edge is the poet’s eloquently passionate struggle at the junction of doubt and devotion.” —Washington Post

From Mary Karr, the prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Liars’ Club, Cherry and Lit, comes Sinners Welcome, her fourth collection of poetry that traces her improbable journey from a tormented childhood into a resolutely irreverent Catholicism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060776565
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/03/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	93
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Mary Karr is the author of three award-winning, bestselling memoirs: The Liars’ Club, Cherry, and Lit, as well as The Art of Memoir, also a New York Times bestseller. She received Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships for poetry and is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.

Read an Excerpt

Sinners Welcome

Poems

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By Mary Karr

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright ©2006 Mary Karr
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060776544

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Pathetic Fallacy

When it became impossible to speak to you
due to your having died and been incinerated,
I sometimes held the uncradled phone

with its neat digits and arcane symbols (crosshatch,
black star) as if embedded in it
were some code I could punch in

to reach you. You bequeathed me
this morbid bent, Mother.
Who gives her sixth-grade daughter

Sartre's Nausea to read? All my life,
I watched you face the void,
leaning into it as a child with a black balloon

will bury her countenance
either to hide from
or to merge with that darkness.

Small wonder that still
in the invisible scrim of air
that delineates our separate worlds,

your features sometimes press toward me
all silvery from the afterlife, woven in wind,
to whisper a caution. Or your hand on my back

shoves me into my life.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Sinners Welcome by Mary Karr Copyright ©2006 by Mary Karr. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided byDial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

So much trickery has been got up to in relgion’s name that it’s natural to get nervous when a writer starts talking about salvation, but Karr never tries to substitute faith for sound poetic practices. If anything, by adding prayer, she just makes the poems that much stronger.” — David Kirby, New York Times

“What gives Sinners Welcome its sharp edge is the poet’s eloquently passionate struggle at the junction of doubt and devotion.” — Judith Kitchen, Washington Post

“Fans of the smart-mouthed hell-raiser need not fear. Karr brings the same unstinting truth-telling sensibility to her spiritual concerns as she has to her earthly struggles.” — Dan DeLuca, Philadelphia Inquirer

“Sinners Welcome mixes her beloved stories from the wrong side of the tracks with new notes of care and forgiveness and pure, often angry, hymns to God. . . . It’s a daring mix. Before she had her fists up; now she strips herself bare, a far braver act.” — Laurel Maury, Los Angeles Times

“Searing, not sentimental.” — Sam Hodges, Dallas Morning News

“These poems…demonstrate poetry as religion’s kin. While not for the unquestioning devout, this book should stand beside works by writers like Thomas Merton or William Everson (a.k.a. Brother Antonitus) in both poetry and spiritual collections.” — Rochelle Ratner, Library Journal

From the Publisher

Searing, not sentimental.

Sam Hodges

As Karr knows, her endeavor is ages old. It may be that all lyric poetry aspires to prayer. What gives Sinners Welcome its sharp edge is the poet's eloquently passionate struggle at the junction of doubt and devotion.
— The Washington Post

Judith Kitchen

Fans of the smart-mouthed hell-raiser need not fear. Karr brings the same unstinting truth-telling sensibility to her spiritual concerns as she has to her earthly struggles.

Dan DeLuca

These poems…demonstrate poetry as religion’s kin. While not for the unquestioning devout, this book should stand beside works by writers like Thomas Merton or William Everson (a.k.a. Brother Antonitus) in both poetry and spiritual collections.

Rochelle Ratner

Sinners Welcome mixes her beloved stories from the wrong side of the tracks with new notes of care and forgiveness and pure, often angry, hymns to God. . . . It’s a daring mix. Before she had her fists up; now she strips herself bare, a far braver act.

Laurel Maury

So much trickery has been got up to in relgion’s name that it’s natural to get nervous when a writer starts talking about salvation, but Karr never tries to substitute faith for sound poetic practices. If anything, by adding prayer, she just makes the poems that much stronger.

David Kirby