All the Fierce Tethers

Readers familiar with Lia Purpura's highly praised essay collections--Increase, On Looking, and Rough Likeness--will know she's a master of observation, a writer obsessed with the interplay between humans and the things they see. The subject matter of All the Fierce Tethers is wonderfully varied, both low (muskrats, slugs, a stained quilt in a motel room) and lofty (shadows, prayer, the idea of beauty). In "Treatise Against Irony," she counters this all-too modern affliction with ferocious optimism and intelligence: "The opposite of irony is nakedness." In "My Eagles," our nation's symbol is viewed from all angles--nesting, flying, politicized, preserved. The essay in itself could be a small anthology. And, in a fresh move, Purpura turns to her own, racially divided Baltimore neighborhood, where a blood stain appears on a street separating East (with its Value Village) and West (with its community garden). Finalist for the National Book Critics Award, winner of the Pushcart Prize, Lia Purpura returns with a collection both sustaining and challenging.

Author: Lia Purpura
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Published: 04/09/2019
Pages: 200
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 7.70h x 5.30w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781946448309