Go hear!

TONIGHT!
Village Books! 7PM!

Set on the margins of Seattle, beneath bridges and on the banks of waterways, in strip clubs and flooded farmland, the prose poems in Tinderbox Lawn illuminate the intersection of domesticity and bohemia, orthodoxy and passion. Each untitled block of prose constitutes a novel-in-miniature, with shadow characters and shards of plot. The intensity of Carol Guess' poems builds through lyrical language and recurring images, capturing the moment when "the small mad heart at the center of things stall mid-tick." Carol Guess is the author of two novels, Seeing Dell and Switch; a memoir, Gaslight, and a collection of poetry, Femme's Dictionary. She is an associate professor of English at Western Washington University.

Poet Joseph Massey has this to say about TINDERBOX LAWN:
The sharply cut lines of Tinderbox Lawn veer from the stark and crystalline―”think hard enough about broken glass and it becomes rain”―to the blur of memory and dreams: ”silver with raindrops―no, barbed wire.” And between those conditions the possibility and impossibility of love lingers throughout, amidst vivid details of urban spectacle. Carol Guess, through brilliantly wrought blocks of prose, has made the kind of poetry you'll want to keep on your night-stand; poetry that won't leave the back of your head―the pulse and insistent whisper of it―a “bridge between faith and decay.”