Before Mary Karr gained wide acclaim for her award-winning memoirs and poetry collections, she became controversial figure in the American poetry establishment, thanks to her Pushcart-award winning essay, "Against Decoration." She followed that up with this searing, honest, and plain-spoken book.
Abacus, her first poetry collection, which has been out of print for nearly twenty years, is again available in the Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporaries Series. |
An Excerpt
The Magnifying Mirror
I found it in my mother's purse: my face
in a blurred circle, upside down,
then my eye grew silver-dollar sized,
skin moon-cratered even then
though I ignored the velvet hairs
and precancerous moles I'd later call
my family traits. I was too young to hate
myself, just thrilled to be so big.
Later, I shrank to see that face,
paid a psychiatrist 5000 bucks
to puff me up again. She shook her head.
She said I sounded like a lovely child
when I described my petty thefts, the shock
with which I stole my mother's face,
growing into her high heels,
her taste for alcohol and men.
This terrifies me so I keep a mirror in my purse,
take it out when I'm alone. Holding it arm's length
I re-create my nose dive from womb to earth.
Or I bring it close: beauty,
ugliness, who knows how many times
each flaw and fear can be magnified,
or whether birth is something to overcome
gradually, not by looking out,
but by looking in.
The Magnifying Mirror
I found it in my mother's purse: my face
in a blurred circle, upside down,
then my eye grew silver-dollar sized,
skin moon-cratered even then
though I ignored the velvet hairs
and precancerous moles I'd later call
my family traits. I was too young to hate
myself, just thrilled to be so big.
Later, I shrank to see that face,
paid a psychiatrist 5000 bucks
to puff me up again. She shook her head.
She said I sounded like a lovely child
when I described my petty thefts, the shock
with which I stole my mother's face,
growing into her high heels,
her taste for alcohol and men.
This terrifies me so I keep a mirror in my purse,
take it out when I'm alone. Holding it arm's length
I re-create my nose dive from womb to earth.
Or I bring it close: beauty,
ugliness, who knows how many times
each flaw and fear can be magnified,
or whether birth is something to overcome
gradually, not by looking out,
but by looking in.