Sinners Welcome

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More About This Book

Overview

Mary Karr describes herself as a black-belt sinner, and this — her fourth collection of poems —traces her improbable journey from the inferno of a tormented childhood into a resolutely irreverent Catholicism. Not since Saint Augustine wrote "Give me chastity, Lord — but not yet!" has anyone brought such smart-assed hilarity to a conversion story.

Karr's battle is grounded in common loss (a bitter romance, friends' deaths, a teenage son's leaving home) as well as in elegies for a complicated mother. The poems disarm with the arresting humor familiar to readers of her memoirs, The Liars' Club and Cherry. An illuminating cycle of spiritual poems have roots in Karr's eight-month tutelage in Jesuit prayer practice, and as an afterword, her celebrated essay on faith weaves the tale of how the language of poetry, which relieved her suffering so young, eventually became the language of prayer. Those of us who fret that poetry denies consolation will find clear-eyed joy in this collection.

Editorial Reviews

Judith Kitchen
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
Publishers Weekly
The author of the memoirs The Liar's Club and Cherry began as a poet; this first collection of verse since 1995's Viper Rum alternates between a familiar, unsparing autobiographical vein and a new commitment to Christian belief. Karr, a recovering alcoholic and a temperamental skeptic, entered the Catholic church in 1996, and poems about God, Christ and Christian rituals may draw most readers' attention: "Disgraceland" describes "my first communion at 40," and tries to blend Karr's characteristic acerbity with her interest in religious compassion: "You are loved, someone said. Take that and eat it." Some of the strongest of Karr's clean, direct free-verse efforts have less to do with religion than with her friends, children, parents, vexing early life. When she writes of "the winter Mother's ashes came in a Ziploc bag," fans of her prose will relate. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
Library Journal
Poetry "was most crucially the first source of awe for me, partly because it could ease my sense of isolation," notes Karr (best known for her memoir The Liar's Club) in the essay "Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer," which acts as an afterword to this collection. Karr converted to Catholicism in 1996, "after a lifetime of undiluted agnosticism," and many of the poems embrace God with an intensity born out of violence that refuses to be masked. The titles of some poems say it all: "Disgraceland," "Waiting for God: Self-Portrait as a Skeleton," or "Overdue Pardon for Mother with Knife." One of the most memorable poems, "Coathanger Bent into Halo," begins: "Gathering up my mother's clothes for the poor/ I find the coathanger that almost aborted me." It continues through a vivid description of the hypothetical abortion, ending with the hope that the same hanger can also be twisted into "a halo to crown my son's head." These poems, even more than the essay, 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, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," NY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780060776565
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 11/3/2009
  • Edition description: Reprint
  • Pages: 93
  • Sales rank: 533,040
  • Product dimensions: 5.40 (w) x 8.10 (h) x 0.40 (d)

Meet the Author

Mary Karr
Mary Karr

Mary Karr is a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. She has won Pushcart Prizes for both verse and essays, and is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University. Her previous two memoirs, The Liars' Club and Cherry, were New York Times bestsellers.

Read an Excerpt

Sinners Welcome

Poems
By Mary Karr

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

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

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...

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.

Table of Contents

Pathetic fallacy 1
Revelations in the key of K 2
Oratorio for the unbecoming 4
Disgraceland 6
Metaphysique du Mal 8
Descending theology : the nativity 9
Delinquent missive 11
This lesson you've got 13
The choice 14
A major 16
Waiting for God : self-portrait as skeleton 18
At the sound of the gunshot, leave a message 19
Elegy for a rain salesman 20
Who the meet are not 23
Hypertrophied football star as serial killer 24
Orders from the invisible 27
Requiem : Professor Walt Mink (1927-1996) 28
Pluck 29
Descending theology : Christ human 31
Miss Flame, apartment bound, as undiscovered porn star 32
Reference for ex-man's next 33
Winter term's end 34
Entering the kingdom 37
Descending theology : the garden 38
Hurt hospital's best suicide jokes 39
Sinners welcome 40
The first step 41
A tapestry figure escapes for occupancy in the real world, which includes the death of her mother 42
Mister Cogito Posthumous 44
For a dying tomcat who's relinquished his former hissing and predatory nature 46
Coat hanger bent into halo 48
Last love 49
The ice fisherman 50
Descending theology : the crucifixion 52
Red-circled want ad for my son on his commencement 53
Son's room 54
Easter at Al Qaeda bodega 56
Garment district sweatshop 57
Overdue pardon for mother with knife 59
Descending theology : the resurrection 61
A blessing from my sixteen years' son 62
Orphanage 64
Still memory 65
Meditatio 67
Afterword : facing altars : poetry and prayer 69

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