Tropic of Squalor

<p>A new volume of poetry from the <em>New York Times</em> bestselling and esteemed author of <em>The Liar's Club</em> and <em>Lit.</em></p><p>Long before she earned accolades for her genre-defining memoirs Mary Karr was winning poetry prizes. Now the beloved author returns with a collection of bracing poems as visceral and deeply felt and hilarious as her memoirs.</p><p> In <em>Tropic of Squalor</em> Karr dares to address the numinous--that mystery some of us hope towards in secret or maybe dare to pray to. The squalor of meaninglessness that every thoughtful person wrestles with sits at the core of human suffering and Karr renders it with power--illness death love's agonized disappointments. Her brazen verse calls us out of our psychic swamplands and into that hard-won awareness of the divine hiding in the small moments that make us human. In a single poem she can generate tears horror empathy laughter and peace. She never preaches. But whether you're an adamant atheist a pilgrim or skeptically curious these poems will urge you to find an inner light in the most baffling hours of darkness.</p>