Sinners welcome

Sinners welcome : poems / Mary Karr. -- New York : HarperCollins, c2006.
93 p. ; 22 cm.
Contents: Pathetic fallacy -- Revelations in the key of K -- Oratorio for the unbecoming -- Disgraceland -- Métaphysique du mal -- Descending theology. The Nativity -- Delinquent missive -- This lesson you’ve got -- The choice -- A major -- Waiting for God : self-portrait as skeleton -- At the sound of the gunshot, leave a message -- Elegy for a rain salesman -- Who the meek are not -- Hypertrophied football star as serial killer -- Orders from the invisible -- Requiem : Professor Walt Mink (1927-1996) -- Pluck -- Descending theology. Christ human -- Miss Flame, apartment bound, as undiscovered porn star -- Reference for ex-man’s next -- Winter term’s end -- Entering the kingdom -- Descending theology. The garden -- Hurt Hospital’s best suicide jokes -- Sinners welcome -- The first step -- A tapestry figure escapes for occupancy in the real world, which includes the death of her mother -- Mister Cogito posthumous -- For a dying tomcat who’s relinquished his former hissing and predatory nature -- Coat hanger bent into halo -- Last love -- The ice fisherman -- Descending theology. The crucifixion -- Red-circled want ad for my son on his commencement -- Son’s room -- Easter at Al Qaeda Bodega -- Garment district sweatshop -- Overdue pardon for mother with knife -- Descending theology. The resurrection -- A blessing from my sixteen years’ son -- Orphanage -- Still memory -- Meditatio -- Afterword: Facing altars : poetry and prayer.
ISBN: 0060776544

1. America poetry -- 21st century. 2. Christian poetry, American.

811.54


If the neon cross on the cover and the title hadn’t forewarned me the latest book of poems by the author of The Liar’s Club and Cherry, the large amount of traditional Christian religious imagery and subject matter would have come as bit of a surprise. Her memoirs of growing up in East Texas contain few references to religion and only a passing allusion to infrequent church visits with neighbors and a fight with girl who accused her (accurately) of saying that the pope dressed like a girl. Other than that there’s her flat statement on page 44 of The Liar’s Club, “We didn’t go to church.” Had I read her previous volumes of poetry I would have been more prepared, but I hadn’t.

So reading Sinners Welcome reminded me of the bits on Monty Python when John Cleese intones, “And now for something completely different.” If you are like me, you might want to start at the back of the book with the essay “Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer,” which tells of her 1996 conversion, “after a lifetime of undiluted agnosticism.” The poems themselves are clear, as befits a poet that proclaimed herself, “Against Decoration,” but certainly not without vivid images and language. And although religious, they are certainly not pious, as witnessed by titles like, “Hypertrophied Football Star as Serial Killer,” “Hurt Hospital’s Best Suicide Jokes,” and ”At the Sound of the Gunshot, Leave a Message.”