For and Against

9780864925398

Sharon McCartney (Author) $17.95 Paperback Published April 16, 2010 - In Stock Goose Lane Editions

Heart-corroding sex with a tin woodman. The encapsulation of a foundering marriage in the state of a cat on the brink of death, whose health cannot be restored, but still manages to purr. Sharon McCartney’s visceral exploration of relationships — how they begin and end, the tenuous threads that hold people together, and the events that can tear them apart is unstintingly, eyes-wide-open aware. Beginnings, endings, transitions — none elude the sometimes sardonic but always sensitive, sinuous, and frank language of McCartney’s finely wrought poems.

Shedding wilful blindness in favour of life-affirming humour, McCartney pushes language from absolute rawness to moments of intimate retrospection, revealing a delicate tension between anger and calm, past and present, denial and acceptance.

Accolades

"You don't read these poems, you feel them: Hammer in the head, shod foot on the throat, stiletto in the heart. It's those combos of wild, piercing insights (or unusual but poignant images); yep, that's what makes it good for you - or kills you, laughing." George Elliott Clarke, author of I & I

"Darly obsessive, For and Against documents the rolling flux of life - the raw wounds of relationships in moments that are, in turn, anguished, edgy, droll, and affectionate. McCartney's poems are an extreme sport - one well worth playing." Jeanette Lynes, author of The New Blue Distance

"McCartney is tough. She doesn’t feel the obligation to rise above a heart-wrenching experience, to find a bright side, or to soften her bitterness . . . These are poems for feeling bad and liking it; not for regretting the vile things you’ve said and done, but for regretting that you now, alas, know better than to say or do them." Abby Paige, The Rover