Tropic of Squalor: Poems

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. This is prayer for the profane, hymns for the heartbroken, and a guide to finding grace in the grit. Brazen Verse: Wrestling with God in a language He understands—direct, shot-through with doubt, and painfully, profanely honest. Unflinching Honesty: From the sterile halls of a loony bin to the grief of a friend’s suicide, Karr confronts the darkest corners of the human experience without looking away. Dark Humor: Find laughter in the most unexpected places, including a scathing look at the literary world and the absurdity of suffering. The Sacred and The Profane: Discover the divine in oil refineries, tenement hallways, and the resilience of a family defined by a love of words and a legacy of silence.