100 Notes on Violence

Julie Carr

Selected for the 2009 Sawtooth Poetry Prize by Rae Armantrout

A sample poem from the book

59.

The book about violence must be a book of quotations.
For everyone speaks about violence.
Is a book of memories, for everyone's life is riddled.

Whereas the floating hand of sexual love stirs the baby's within, the floating
arms of Godly love lift the earth to the sun. Whereas trees by the river greening.
Girls in the coffee line, ravened and foamed.

Precise in their aging, their bodies roam. Not every day's a happy day; my plays
are peppered with crime.

Agree,

agree to take me with you.