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For and Against
Shortlisted, Next Generation Indie Book Award Heart-corroding sex with a tin woodman. A foundering marriage like a cat on the brink of death that still manages to purr. Sharon McCartney's visceral exploration of relationships — how they begin and end, the tenuous threads that hold people together, and the events that can tear them apart — is unstinting, eyes-wide-open aware. Beginnings, endings, none elude the sometimes sardonic but always sinuous language of these finely wrought poems.
- GenresPoetry
76 pages, Paperback
First published April 16, 2010
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June 27, 2023Flashes of a woman’s divorce experience expressed as poetry. Very personal. I could certainly relate to some of it.
June 22, 2010
Books written in and out of divorce can be difficult to read. The reader
has to trust that what they're reading isn't a book-length attempt at
getting even.
Or, if it is, the poems have to be so good that the writer's
indiscretions don't matter.
As an entry in this genre, Sharon McCartney's sixth collection, For and
Against (Goose Lane Editions, 96 pages, $17.95) is most interesting for
its anger.
Though there are plenty of taboos around women being publicly angry,
McCartney is never strident and she never lets content overwhelm form.
The California-born but Fredericton-based poet also has a wonderfully
rueful sense of humour, as evidenced in the two-line poem Refrain: "What
I fail to do, / repeatedly."
Longtime McCartney-ites need not despair, there are poems here about her
temptestuous childhood and a handful of her trademark in-character
poems, this time drawing on novels such as The Sun Also Rises and Lady
Chatterly's Lover but also (always?) Anna Karenina.
(From my March 27 poetry column for the Winnipeg Free Press' books section.)
has to trust that what they're reading isn't a book-length attempt at
getting even.
Or, if it is, the poems have to be so good that the writer's
indiscretions don't matter.
As an entry in this genre, Sharon McCartney's sixth collection, For and
Against (Goose Lane Editions, 96 pages, $17.95) is most interesting for
its anger.
Though there are plenty of taboos around women being publicly angry,
McCartney is never strident and she never lets content overwhelm form.
The California-born but Fredericton-based poet also has a wonderfully
rueful sense of humour, as evidenced in the two-line poem Refrain: "What
I fail to do, / repeatedly."
Longtime McCartney-ites need not despair, there are poems here about her
temptestuous childhood and a handful of her trademark in-character
poems, this time drawing on novels such as The Sun Also Rises and Lady
Chatterly's Lover but also (always?) Anna Karenina.
(From my March 27 poetry column for the Winnipeg Free Press' books section.)
October 8, 2011
These poems powerfully capture the anger and distress when one's marriage bond has broken down and a new chapter awaits. McCartney is clearly talented and not afraid to write words that cut to the bone. I sent a few of these poems to a young woman I write to in prison and she was very moved by them as other poetry has never done for her. I agree. These are not the kind of thing you'd choose to read at your sister's wedding but they are raw emotion brought to life by a talented wordsmith with plenty of difficult life experience to draw from. Highly recommended for those who don't usually find poetry that captivating or alive.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews