In her celebrated essay "Against Decoration," published in Parnassus, Mary Karr took aim against the verbal ornaments that too often pass for poetry these days and their attendant justifications: deconstruction and a "new formalism" that elevates form as an end in itself. Her own poems, she says, are "humanist poems," written for everyday readers rather than an exclusive audience--poems that do not require an academic explication in order to be understood. Of The Devil's Tour, her newest collection, she writes: "This is a book of poems about standing in the dark, about trying to memorize the bad news. The tour is a tour of the skull. l am thinking of Satan in Paradise Lost: 'The mind is its own place and it can make a hell of heav'n or a heav'n of hell … I myself am hell."
| ISBN: | 9780811212311 |
| Publication date: | 10th January 2025 |
| Author: | Mary Karr |
| Publisher: | New Directions Books an imprint of New Directions |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 51 pages |
| Series: | New Directions Paperbook |
| Genres: |
Horror and Supernatural Fiction |