Sue Carnahan • Auto Repair

• The Weldon Kees Award 2004 •

From the Critics:

The challenge of the short lyric is not to say too little and not to say too much. In fragments of anecdotes, logical parallelisms, human paradoxes and instruction manuals, all lucid, and fluid and terse, this series is as remarkable for what it doesn't do as for what it does. It never judges, but gives perspective in moments of dead-pan comedy and the ambiguous wisdom of Confucian-like hypotheses. In its weaving of garage mechanics with the delicate evolution of relationship, it shows that marriage can be learned in the same way as a trade, on the job, with jammed thumbs and missing parts. A loving warmth seeps through the essential sadness of the doomed marriage, as when the eccentric husband is distracted at work and forgets to smoke each cigarette he lights: “Later they were like / little ghosts on top of / empty beer cans.” In the tradition of Basho and Sappho and George Oppen, this book meets the challenge, and makes us, if not better spouses, then better people.
   • Steve Orlen - Recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and three NEA Awards

Sly, dry, disturbing and fun, Auto Repair records a marriage's dissolution in a slow motion detonation. I've read it many times, and it always re-rewards. A splendid debut.
   • Boyer Rickel - Author of arreboles

About the Author:

Sue Carnahan is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the 7 Carmine Poetry Collective, based in New York City. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Arizona and currently lives in Tumacácori. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals including Barrow Street and Rattapallax.