Diamonds (American Poets Continuum Series, 189)

Product Description
Diamonds presents a woman in midlife on the edge. In hilarious and heartbreaking poems, Camille Guthrie writes about the trials and surprises of divorce, parenting, country life―and the difficulties and delights of being alone, looking at art, and falling in love.
Witty resilience abounds in these irreverent poems about grief and desire―in which the poet meditates upon gender roles, history, pop culture, and academia. Guthrie subverts and teases traditional forms in an elegy about Sylvia Plath’s prom dress, a dating profile for Hieronymus Bosch, a sestina about beauty and power―with radical dramatic monologues in the voices of Madame du Barry, a Pict Woman, and more. Unlike Virgil, who refuses to guide this poet through her journey at midlife, Guthrie leads readers by the hand into a provoking, affecting journey of a break-up and a reconciliation with love.
Review
“The poems in Diamonds were written by a tiger who survived divorce, single motherdom, middle age, and sleepless nights worrying about money and what clothes to wear, one who knows it could be worse but wants her revenge, which is―surprise―the revenge of an angel who possesses such intelligence, knowledge, charm, and wit that these poems, from Björk to Bosch, pay us in diamonds and bless us all.” ―Mary Ruefle, Author of My Private Property and Madness, Rack, and Honey
“Camille Guthrie’s Diamonds is a glorious feminist midlife scream, screed, and ode to the ‘paradoxes and oxymorons’ of a divorced mother’s struggles. With the dark formal wit of Philip Larkin and cutting rage of Sylvia Plath, Guthrie goes there, with hilarious piss and vinegar, on the Sisyphean defeats of an academic stranded; a mother burdened; a consumerist broke; a woman who’s had enough. Plundering the wisdom from Shakespeare, Keats, and Butler, along with the wisdom of online flotsam, Guthrie creates a fresh ribald collection that is all too relatable and unputdownable.” ―Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning and Engine Empire
About the Author
Camille Guthrie is the author of three books of poetry:
Articulated Lair: Poems for Louise Bourgeois (Subpress, 2013),
In Captivity (Subpress, 2006), and
The Master Thief (Subpress, 2000). Her poems have appeared in such journals as
At Length, Boston Review, Green Mountains Review, The Iowa Review, The New Republic, Poem-A-Day, and
Tin House, as well as in several anthologies including the
Best of American Poetry 2019 & 2020 (Scribner) and
Art & Artists: Poems (Everyman’s Library). Guthrie has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell and the Yaddo Foundation. She received her MFA from Brown University and her BA in English Literature from Vassar College. The Director of the Undergraduate Writing Initiatives at Bennington College, she lives in rural Vermont with her two children.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Virgil, Hey
Ah me! I find myself middle-aged divorced lost In the forest dark of my failures mortgage & slack breasts It’s hard to admit nobody wants to do me anymore Not even Virgil will lead me down to his basement rental Take a look at my firstborn son Who put me on three months’ bed rest For whom I bled on the emergency room floor Who declaims his device sucks Stabs holes in his bedroom wall Complains his ATV’s too slow Who plots to run away to join terrorists He’d rather die than do math And the little one ripped From my womb in the surgery room I pierced my nipples to unblock her milk Who escapes from her car seat en route Howls in rage ’cause her cake isn’t pretty Writes “No Mom” on her door with a Sharpie Who says, “No fence but you’re kinda fat” She’d rather die than wear underpants Virgil, hey! Send me down To the second circle of hell where I belong With those whom Love separated from Reason Where an infernal hurricane will blast me Hither & thither with no hope ever no comfort Rather than drive these two to school this morn