The Life, Paperback

The poems in Carrie Fountain's third collection, The Life, exist somewhere, as Rilke says, between our daily life and the great work--an interstitial space where sidelong glances live alongside shouts to heaven. In elegant, colloquial language, Fountain observes her children dressing themselves in fledgling layers of personhood, creating their own private worlds and personalities, and makes room for genuine marvels in the midst of routine. Attuned to the delicate, fleeting moments that together comprise a life, these poems offer a guide by which to navigate the signs and symbols, and to pilot if not the perfect life, the only life, the life we are given.

About author(s):Carrie Fountain was born and raised in Mesilla, New Mexico. Fountain's books include the National Poetry Series award winner Burn Lake and Instant Winner. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Tin House, among others. She received her MFA at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin where she was a fellow. She lives with her husband, playwright and novelist Kirk Lynn, in Austin, Texas.