Tinderbox Lawn - Softcover

Carol Guess is the author of the fiction collection DARLING ENDANGERED (Brooklyn Arts Press); the novels Seeing Dell (Cleis Press) and SWITCH (Calyx Books); a memoir, Gaslight (Odd Girls Press); three poetry collections, FEMME'S DICTIONARY (Calyx Books), DOLL STUDIES: FORENSICS (Black Lawrence Press) and TINDERBOX LAWN (Rose Metal Press); and a collection of essays, MY FATHER IN WATER (Shearsman Books). She teaches Creative Writing and Queer Studies at Western Washington University and lives with her spouse, writer Elizabeth Colen, on the Washington coast.

Tinderbox Lawn will light you on fire. The music is broken glass; the buildings in flame. Even the language is bruised blue and purple. Richly steeped in the violence of loss, these poems are a tea so sharp it cuts teacups to shards. And one wants to keep drinking for the war planes and train whistles, the queer girls in dresses, for Guess's vulnerable and unbreakable voice. --Jen Currin, author of The Sleep of Four Cities

The sharply cut lines of Tinderbox Lawn veer from the stark and crystalline [...] to the blur of memory and dreams [...] And between those conditions the possibility and impossibility of love lingers throughout, amidst vivid details of urban spectacle. Carol Guess, through brilliantly wrought blocks of prose, has made the kind of poetry you'll want to keep on your night-stand; poetry that won't leave the back of your head the pulse and insistent whisper of it a bridge between faith and decay. --Joseph Massey, author of Out of Light

This is such deep, rich writing. Tinderbox Lawn feels like dreams you forgot as you walk through your day but it's your life. I mean we never think as deeply as we live and Carol Guess tries to braid those strands and succeeds. I love being in this work. --Eileen Myles, author of Sorry, Tree