Honey
Richard Carr
Winner of the Gival Press Poetry Award - 2007.
Finalist for the ForeWord Magazine Book Award for Poetry - 2008
"Honey is a tour de force. Comprised of 100 electrifying microsonnets, Richard Carr’s invention recalls Berryman’s Dreamsongs, for brilliance and wit, but is more readable. Open to any page: language and image startle and delight, like 'Einstein’s blown-fuse hairdo.' The whole sequence creates a narrative that becomes, like the Hapax Legomenon, a form that occurs only once in a literature." —Barbara Louise Ungar, author of the award-winning collection The Origin of the Milky Way and final judge of the 2007 Gival Press Poetry Award
"This sequence of compact poems is musically subtle, visually surprising, and, at times, deeply moving. More than this, though, Honey is an ambitious, intricately unified book, part brilliant lyrical meditation and part surreal Bildungsroman. In it, Richard Carr creates a character whose search for truth and self (accompanied by the Bearded Lady, the Poet, the Boy, and the Hapax) is delightful and ambiguous. Honey is a poetry collection unlike any you’re likely to encounter. It is a wonderful, breathtaking achievement." —Kevin Prufer, editor of Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing
“Honey explodes the mundane and visits the extraordinary in extraordinary ways." —Kathleen Volk Miller, co-editor, Painted Bride Quarterly
"You can always tell a poet by the company his poems keep. On my poetry shelf Richard Carr's Honey will find itself a near neighbor to the books of Russell Edson, Charles Simic, James Tate, and Bill Knott. Prove me wrong, if you can, for placing it there. But in the meantime, read Richard Carr's poems. They may be 'strange to the bees' but they will, I predict, become familiar to you, something like a new normal." —William Slaughter, editor of Mudlark: An Electronic Journal of Poetry and Poetics
Richard Carr
Richard Carr grew up in Blue Earth, Minnesota, and lives in Minneapolis. A former systems analyst, web designer, and tavern manager, he has taught writing and literature at several universities and community colleges. His other poetry collections are Street Portraits (The Backwaters Press), Ace (Word Works, winner of the Washington Prize), and Mister Martini (University of North Texas Press, winner of the Vassar Miller Prize). His chapbooks include Butterfly and Nothingness (Mudlark) and Letters from North Prospect (Frank Cat Press, winner of the Frank Cat Press Chapbook Competition).
