Polite Occasions

by Anne Babson

Overview

Polite Occasions writes back both to Revelation and Emily Post because it imagines the future is female, that she is a lady, and if the human race Is to survive what evangelical Christians call “end times,” it will be because ladies have decided to make unladylike plans. This collection is largely set in a dystopian near-future world where political structures have become authoritarian and many feel spiritually adrift, all while most people pretend not to notice. It examines the ways in which silence renders people complicit with oppression in all its forms. It earnestly explores faith through doubt and disappointment. It might even be called a Christian poetry collection, though it is surely one that some right-wing Christians would like to burn. It is an unapologetically feminist work as well, one that understands that the oppression of women often gets enacted in the name of false gods. The poems of this collection speak their exhortations to the reader in both formal and free verse in a high vernacular that considers contemporary life in reference to much older texts. Some of the works of this collection have won prizes, and many have been published in journals in North America, Europe, and Asia. The collection stands as a warning to both the faithful and faithless that we live in an era where we might fall under an Orwellian regime infused with religious language and that democracy might fall while we take selfies.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940155180562
Publisher:	Unsolicited Press
Publication date:	03/13/2018
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	154 KB

About the Author

Anne Babson's first collection "The White Trash Pantheon" won the Colby H. Kullman prize from the Southern Writers Southern Writing Conference in Oxford, Mississippi. She wrote the libretto for the opera Lotus Lives, which has been performed in multiple cities and is slated for production once more in Montreal in 2018. She is the author of three chapbooks- "Poems Under Surveillance" is still in print with Finishing Line Press, and she has a forthcoming chapbook from Dancing Girl Press entitled "Dolly Shot". She has been anthologized in the United States and in England, most recently in the notable collection "Nasty Women Poets: an Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse" released in 2017. Her work has appeared in literary journals on five continents and has won numerous editorial awards. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize four times. She has received residency grants from Yaddo and Vermont Studio Center. Her blog about moving south, The Carpetbaggers Journal, has close to 50,000 hits and has been picked up by Y'all Politics and PBS-related websites. She writes lyrics for a variety of musical projects, most recently a blues album. She teaches writing and literature at Southeastern Louisiana University. She writes and lives in New Orleans. She will read there at this year's Tennessee Williams Festival.

Editorial Reviews

These poems are generous and ambitious, sometimes intricately whittled, sometimes Whitmanian, deeply American but defying borders, telling stories to keep the reader wondering all night.

Marilyn Hacker, poet

Anne Babson writes intersections between old texts and contemporary life. For my opera Lotus Lives, she imagined the conjunction of a traditional Chinese folk tale and a hip- hop anthem. In her book The White Trash Pantheon, Greek gods swapped Olympus for a Gulf Coast trailer park. In “Vineland,” she soothes you with a Nordic ode to nature then bear - hugs you with shouts of welcome.She understands, just as I do in my work, that good art shouldn't forget the past as it innovates.

— Su Lian Tan, Interbationally acclaimed composer

The mothers and foremothers of "Polite Occasions" sought stability in a violent, patriarchal world with the rules laid out in etiquette books. Their daughters interrogate that inheritance of calling cards, tea dances, watercress sandwiches, and wedding china as their world hurtles ever faster toward apocalypse. The tender heart of this astonishing collection is the 15-poem lyric sequence "The Unborn," addressed to five imagined children who will never be brought forth into the "smoldering black hole" of the present. This is a book of revelations for our own age.

Julie Kane, poet

In Babson’s review of etiquette, we find disguised sequences on what it means to be and to bless the stranger. The collection’s invitation to reconsider women’s still contradictory roles in light of the inescapable weight of both feminist and biblical heritages is too tempting to turn down. Addresses such heady themes as hypocrisy, sin, theodicy, and tradition with a humor and irreverence that still manages to explore these larger questions with aplomb. A truly singular voice among America’s living poets in her expert blending of wit, prophetic wisdom, and feisty political commentary.



Dr. Scarlett Cunningham, Oral Roberts University

What I really enjoyed in Polite Occasions is the careful, subtle use of humor in describing scenes of sadness and dark commentary on the current scene.

Rather than have the poems as a set-up for a punchline, a la Brautigan, Ms. Babson uses small dashes of wit as a light garnish. The Recounting of a Polite Occasion, and How To, are particularly good examples.

The "Aging Bond Girl Calls Her Best Friend", on the other hand, takes a superficially comic premise and mines it for notes of regret for a life melodramatically lived.

To sum up, I very much enjoyed Ms. Babson's book and need to catch up on her previous works.

-- Christopher Moran

From the Publisher