In the Carnival of Breathing

Praise for In the Carnival of Breathing (Black Lawrence Press, 2011)

Winner of the Fall 2009 Black River Chapbook Competition

In her poem ‘Staying Afloat,’ Lisa Fay Coutley declares, “You might say this is about held breath & swift kicks.” This could be said about the entirety of In the Carnival of Breathing, in which Coutley deftly alternates moments of lyric contemplation with the brutal–and banal–realities of love. A single mother leaves Post-Its around the house convincing herself not to leave her children; a woman confronts the map of another woman’s hair on her pillow; a lake in one moment makes a cradle, and in the next “freezes just before she murders / her own shore.” It’s impossible not to admire Coutley’s fierce language, her restless line, her attention to form, and her understanding that creation and destruction are just two sides of the same coin. Prepare yourself to be drawn into the world of someone “who forces a bit into the mouth / of aurora borealis until the moon parades / its wounds in color.” This is a terrific collection.
— Sandra Beasley, author of Count the Waves: Poems

The poems in this collection map for us the complex geography of the human heart. Lisa Fay Coutley deftly melds the real with the mystical in these sage poems: where there is man or lover or son, there also lurks a wound dragging its shadow across the floor. In the Carnival of Breathing is a book about the journey a soul takes from lushness to drought, from flowing liquid to hard-packed dirt, and the journey back again. Cup your hands around these poems and you hold lakes and scorching deserts, a bruised home with two boys and lots of love in it. You could chisel poems like “Respiration” and “Errata” into stone, erect them in city parks for all human kind to read. Slow down now, these poems bid us, drown awhile in the sweet and haunting fires of the human heart.
— John Rybicki, author of We Bed Down into Water: Poems