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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.

    "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.”

    —David Rigsbee


    Carolyne Wright’s latest 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 2009. 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, a volume of essays, and five award-winning volumes in translation from Spanish and Bengali. 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 and 4Culture grants, and a 2020-2021 Fulbright Scholar Award will take her back to Bahia after the Covid-19 pandemic subsides in Brazil.

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