Description
Dirt
by C. Prudence Arceneaux
$14.99, paper
978-1-63534-248-2
2017
Prudence Arceneaux, a native Texan, is a poet who has taught English and Creative Writing at Austin Community College, in Austin, TX, since 1998. She earned a BA in English/ Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico, but even before finishing the degree realized “there’s no place like home.” Upon her return to Texas, she began work on an MFA in Creative Writing, which she received from the University- formerly- known- as- Southwest- Texas- State in 1998. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Limestone, New Texas, Clark Street Review, Hazmat Review and Inkwell.
Steve Wilson (verified owner) –
Memories of profound loss and longing permeate the poems in Prudence Arceneaux’s remarkable chapbook, Dirt, but her real achievement is that they nevertheless conjure joy and pleasure and sensuality. Such complicated emotions attest that the reality rendered in these poems is personal – of the person, defining the person, expressing the person – so that in reading Arceneaux’s poems we are offered a generous and knowing portrait of how we humans make sense of the world.
Charlotte Gullick –
From the word first of this collection, “Listen,” to the last lines, “eyes begging me/to act right just once this time,” Dirt compels by rendering what lingers and builds in the gritty, earth-bound spaces between us. Again and again, Arceneaux moves between the soil and the sky with deft, musical phrasing, asking us to pause with her in the moments of almost connection, of almost release, of almost fully living before our last breaths.
Martha Chang (verified owner) –
Every word in Dirt feels like it was chosen with furious intent. Her words are always precise, their rhythm deeply musical, and so expressive of a shining, striving soul. I was thankful to find these poems and live within them for a while, and I know I’ll be back again and again.
Martha Chang (verified owner) –
This beautiful volume of incisive, musical poetry shines a light on the dark spaces we like to hide from each other. Arceneaux calls us to see ourselves as we really are, complicated, dirty, confused, and ultimately worthy of redemption and grace. I want to fold myself into her lines again and again, waiting for the new growth to begin.