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MASQUERADE

MASQUERADE

$21.00Price

ISBN: 978-1-7364323-3-4

Pub Date: Sept. 2021

Pages: 168


By Carolyne Wright


Masquerade is a jazz-inflected, lyric-narrative sequence of poems, a "memoir in poetry" set principally in pre-Katrina New Orleans and in Seattle, involving an interracial couple, artists and writers. Moved by mutual fascination, shared ideals and aspirations, and the passion they discover in each other, the two are challenged to find a place together in the cultures of both races and families, amidst personal and political dislocations as well as questions of trust, against the backdrop of America's racism and painful social history. The 20th century's global problem, the color line, as W.E.B. du Bois declared it, is enacted here in microcosm between these lovers and fellow artists, who must face their own fears and unresolved conflicts in each other. Similar stories have been told from the male protagonist's point of view; Masquerade is unique in foregrounding the female perspective.

    Masquerade is a "memoir in poetry," a love story in verse, about an interracial couple in racist America. In public, each has to wear a mask and signal each other. In private, when they are able take off their masks, pain and joy emerge. The couple's fate is not entirely their own, as the pressures of society are also at play. Carolyne Wright uses poetic form—acrostic, round, sestina, triolet—as well as free verse to tell this personal history with grace, wit, and poignancy. 

     

    —Denise Duhamel

     

     

    Carolyne Wright's poetic memoir Masquerade is a love story in, and about, New Orleans, a place that has been tentatively accepting of highly charged romantic relationships of people of different races, and this is where Carolyne Wright's brave and beautiful poems locate the reader. I love the tension in this story, whose dramatic arc holds through from first poem to last.

     

    —Gary Copeland Lilley

     

     

    Carolyne Wright's ambitious new collection, Masquerade, recounts the arc of a decades-ago love affair. In the course of the narrative, the poet considers how we return to the wonder and force of feelings, how we try to tame sorrow and regret with words, how words are required to approach the body's understanding. There are poems here of undeniable formal mastery, and there's no escaping a kind of almost courageous will to transcend loss and look accountability in the face. It is a stunning achievement for a poet at the pinnacle of her powers. 

     

    —David Rigsbee

     

    It's rare for a book of poetry to be a great beach read. Masquerade by Carolyne Wright is the tale of a troubled young interracial relationship set mostly with the background of a music-filled New Orleans. It's a page turner. I couldn't wait to get to the next poem.

     

    --Mary Eliza Crane


    Carolyne Wright’s previous book is This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems (Lost Horse Press, 2017), whose title poem won a Pushcart Prize and also appeared in The Best American Poetry. Her ground-breaking anthology, Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace (Lost Horse, 2015), received ten Pushcart Prize nominations. Carolyne has five earlier books of poetry, four chapbooks, a volume of essays, and five award-winning volumes in translation from Spanish and Bengali. Forthcoming is a volume of essays and interviews, Trajectories: Crossing the Map of Poetry, in the University of Michigan's Poets on Poetry Series. A Contributing Editor for the Pushcart Prizes, she teaches for Seattle’s Richard Hugo House and for conferences and festivals worldwide. Carolyne has held Fulbright and other fellowships to Chile, India (Kolkata), and Bangladesh; and she returned to Brazil in 2018 on an Instituto Sacatar artists residency in Bahia. She has also received NEA, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and 4Culture grants; and a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Brazil took her back to Salvador, Bahia, in 2022 and 2024.

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