The Stranger Manual

By Catie Rosemurgy

Catie Rosemurgy's second collection, The Stranger Manual , is a wild rush across the American grain. The poems follow an unlikely character named Miss Peach, an unpredictable, cartoonish shapeshifter,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 155597547X
• ISBN13: 9781555975470
• Release Date: December 2009
• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 7.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

The Stranger Manual: Poems

//The Stranger Manual//, Catie Rosemurgy's second book of poems, will make you smile. Most of us think of poems as solemn things, written to convey urgent messages to mankind; we open a book of poems and expect to weep. Thus, it was a delight for me to read Rosemurgy's book and catch myself laughing. The imaginative poet can assume difference voices, create places and people, and still speak to a collective human experience. Rosemurgy does all this by giving us the convoluted but never quite nonsensical narratives of Miss Peach, a character whose complexity is doubled by her elusive physicality. Miss Peach may be hard to categorize, but this doesn't stop her from speaking. In fact, it is her fluidity that gives her freedom. But she is who she is: an American and never quite free! Full of wit, honesty, and humor, Rosemurgy's poems provide a soft critique of the paradox of American culture: the liberty, the countless options, and the being simultaneously trapped in materialism, individuality, and the pursuit of youthful beauty. //The Stranger Manual// will make you question who you are, how you speak, and what you do, but mostly, it will make you laugh out loud. Reviewed by Viola Allo