Trailer Park Oracle

This is a book that peers from the edges of wild places: from the flickerings of a French film to the heady thrills of train trestles, from the doorways of long-abandoned houses to the quiet of the vigils at the hospital bed. With a voice both gentle and fierce, Carroll-Hackett's poems are unafraid to see us as the aching creatures we are, to ask the hard questions of language and loss, not even flinching as they reveal the wonder and pain of our very world like the title poem's...
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This is a book that peers from the edges of wild places: from the flickerings of a French film to the heady thrills of train trestles, from the doorways of long-abandoned houses to the quiet of the vigils at the hospital bed. With a voice both gentle and fierce, Carroll-Hackett's poems are unafraid to see us as the aching creatures we are, to ask the hard questions of language and loss, not even flinching as they reveal the wonder and pain of our very world like the title poem's Oracle, "calling them as they played, no cushioning of the blow."
-Amy Tudor, author of A Book of Birds and Studies in Extinction
The needs that haunt our lives also haunt Mary Carroll-Hackett's newest collection. In Trailer Park Oracle, there is a need for food and love, and to find the true self. But Carroll-Hackett also reminds us that among all of the shining things in this world, we might sometimes forget who we are. "So you repeat, some mantra you think you're making, until it all just becomes shaking." Through the rich narrative of this collection, we are reminded of the path back to ourselves, how "the seed knew, at last, its own light."
-Julie Brooks Barbour, author of Small Chimes
These poems are anchored in love - stubborn, earth-bound, unrelenting love and the generosity that it engenders. And while Carroll-Hackett is NOT the oracle of the title, she is a diviner nevertheless, looking through the quotidian-bread & blankets, Ferris wheels & automotive transmissions, dead deer and starving bears-for clues to the mysterious nature of our human hearts.
-Doug Van Gundy