13 Ways of Happily. Emily Carr

      

      Free Verse Editions

      Edited by Jon Thompson

      13 ways of happily

      books 1 & 2

      Emily Carr

      Parlor Press

      Anderson, South Carolina

      www.parlorpress.com

      Parlor Press LLC, Anderson, South Carolina

      © 2011 by Parlor Press

      All rights reserved.

      Printed in the United States of America

      S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Carr, Emily, 1978-

      13 ways of happily : books 1-2 / Emily Carr.

      p. cm. -- (Free verse editions)

      ISBN 978-1-60235-202-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-203-2 (adobe ebook)

      I. Title. II. Title: Thirteen ways of happily. III. Series.

      PS3603.A77265A616 2011

      811’.6--dc22

      2010054542

      Cover design by David Blakesley.

      Cover image: “Happiness” by Emily Carr. Oil on paper. Image U990.17.1-2 courtesy of University of Victoria Art Collections.

      Printed on acid-free paper.

      Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paper, cloth and Adobe eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621, or e-mail [email protected].

      Contents

       book 1: the journal of elastic perception.

       draft 1, eye, white & spring.

       draft 2, & you know this is your fate to waver.

       draft 3, the flower of having passed through paradise in a dream.

       book 2, an alphabet of gluing from misshapen wings.

       draft 4, the long fall to dirt heaven.

       draft 5, half a wishbone expressing with broken breast the truth.

       draft 6, dandelion to the instant.

       acknowledgments

       about the author

       Free Verse Editions

      For B.C.

      There is no story in which you are not the background.

      book 1: the journal of elastic perception.

      Getting married is like that.

      Getting married is not like that.

      —Marie Ponsot “The Border”

      draft 1, eye, white & spring.

      1

      the young housewife forging myth in the kitchen—like all

      the old hopes, the beginning can only be called by what it is not

      2

      something panting—truly—in this ecstatic

      anarchic release into the commonplace: the very thing (as foetus) & object

      of enjoyment (amore propre) disoriented in the whitehot air

      3

      —yes everyday falling while gravity

      throws apples from the trees—

      4

      in which version did we—

      a woman (double you’d

      a child (so microscopically correct

      a man (practices yes, no—

      share that single cell?

      5

      in the leaf & bud & how the blue

      swings swagger from cowboy

      hats sparrows make happy dustbaths—

      6

      try to be patient. high above the old white

      pinwheels in

      the dilated gaze of sublet

      the sparrow’s eye, leafless—

      with bewildered adjacency

      7