Figeater

Winner of the John Ridland Poetry Prize. In Andrea Carter’s powerful Figeater, '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.-Tomás Q. MorínIn Figeater, 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.' Figeater 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. -Donna Spruijt-Metz