THE LIFE

In this collection, an acclaimed poet deepens her exploration of the domestic in these playful, wise, and humorous poems.

The poems in Carrie Fountain's third collection, THE LIFE, exist somewhere, as Rilke says, between "our daily life" and "the great work" - an interstitial space where sidelong glances live alongside shouts to heaven. In elegant, colloquial language, Fountain observers her children dressing themselves in fledgling layers of personhood, creating their own private worlds and personalities, and makes room for genuine marvels in the midst of the routine. Attuned to the delicate, fleeting moments that together comprise a life, these poems offer a guide by which to navigate the signs and symbols, and to pilot if not the perfect life, the only life, the life we are given.

Carrie Fountain's poems have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, and The New Yorker, among others. She is the author of the poetry collections Burn Lake, a National Poetry Series winner, and Instant Winner, along with the young adult novel I'm Not Missing. Fountain received her MFA as a fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently writer-in-residence at St. Edward's University.