The Room Where I Was Born

Author: Brian Teare Publisher: The University of Wisconsin Press (2003) An architecture equally poetry, fairy-tale, autobiography, and fiction, The Room Where I Was Born rebuilds the house of the lyric from fragments salvaged from experience and literature. Though the poems are borne out of the intersection of violence and sexuality, they also affirm the tenderness and compassion necessary to give consciousness and identity sufficient meaning. Its language the threshold over which the brutal crosses into the beautiful, this collection is an achievement of courage and vision. “Brian Teare’s poetry is turning the lyric on its ear, along with the Southern Gothic, the fairy tale, the Old Testament—anything that gets in the way of his powerful voice gets pulled in, chewed up, spit out as a new and frightening (and sexy!) utterance. No one is safe in any of these poems, in any sense of the word. What a brave new voice, livid and gutsy and fresh.” –D. A. Powell “Precious few first books posse