Figeater

<p>Winner of the John Ridland Poetry Prize. </p><p></p><p>In Andrea Carter's powerful <em>Figeater</em> we follow the/road the terrible invention// of hope until we reach the place where desire stretches the limits of what a heart can endure. Like Jupiter's great storm this collection is a constant/ hurricane grasping expanding/ feeling for a purchase stability/ a place to collapse fall apart re-/accumulate. What abundant soulful heartwork.</p><p>-Tomás Q. Morín</p><p></p><p>In <em>Figeater</em> Andrea Carter shows herself to be a master of extended metaphor and the lyric. The book chronicles abuse abandonment betrayal-the men often seeing someone else the mother as wicked queen-I am a moving violation says the speaker-trapped with no one to release me from my glass coffin. There is emptiness and hunger here-No one will know//the hunger of us. The central reveal is scattered like breadcrumbs throughout the book: I looked more like/an adult even at ten and my body//belonged to my stepfather. In a key poem The Welder the speaker is likened to Hephaestus metal worker to the gods-the daughter is [...]/the conjoining joint testament//between her mother/and the man her mother sends/her daughter to//in order to make him happy. <em>Figeater</em> is a blistering deeply felt tribute to Carter's ability to open a coherent and difficult world with language both lush and sharp. It is beautifully wrought. </p><p>-Donna Spruijt-Metz</p>