Underscore

Tender lyric poetry dedicated to two of the poets most influential late teachers. Julie Carrs most intimate book to date, Underscore, is dedicated to two of Carrs foundational teachers, the dancer Nancy Stark Smith and the poet Jean Valentine, both of whom died in 2020. Elegiac and tenderat times erotic at other times bitterthese poems remain deeply invested in human relationships amid a life whose backdrop is human suffering. Reaching toward the ghost companions in the thicket and to the beloveds who still pulse with activity, Underscores sonically intricate poems express a longing for dynamic forces of intra-action, a sense of expanded encounter, and what Stark Smith called overlapping kinespheres.