Tropic of Squalor: Poems

Written 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: May 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9780062848055

Mary Karr

Mary Karr was born in 1955 in Texas. She is an American poet, essayist and memoirist. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry in 2005 and has won Pushcart prizes for both her poetry and her essays. She is the author of three memoirs, The Liar's Club, Cherry and Lit. She lives in New York where she teaches English at Syracuse University.