Tropic of Squalor

Poems

By: Mary Karr

Narrated by: Mary Karr

A new volume of poetry from the New York Times bestselling and esteemed author of The Liar’s Club and Lit.

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. In Tropic of Squalor, 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.

Beautiful, haunting and unmistakably Mary!

This is a haunting emotional ride. Beautiful, raw and so very real. I loved every single poem. If you think you don’t like, or don’t ‘get’ poetry... read this and you will be converted. It’s a perfect collection of verse about our times. Must read! And hearing the author read it, with her own unique and moving voice makes it all the better so it’s worth buying the audio version, too. Thank you, Mary Karr. This is perfection.