Behind the Scenes at the Eternal Everyday by Pamela Hobart Carter

“We can all be made anew. That was my biggest takeaway from these visually delightful and insightful collage poems. Building a poem is always a careful labor of love, but Carter has taken it one step further, cutting out words from magazines and repositioning them into new ideas and images. Read these poems slowly. Take in each word’s presence as Carter “summon[s] old ideas to create new ones.” Here “A poet glows in the dark” in poems full of color, energy, and transformative hope.”

— Deborah Bacharach, Author of Shake & Tremor and After I Stop Lying

“Behind the Scenes at the Eternal Everyday is a glimpse over the shoulder of an artist sifting through and reordering her grief. Each assembled poem is constructed of deceptively simple yet highly intentioned words: the language of junk mail. These playful recombinations, which recall the whimsey of magnet poetry and the demand of ransom notes, ground the ephemeral in yearning. We read between the lines to sense what’s truly been lost, altered, and misplaced: the security of hands, the smell of thunder, the wise woman in the hollow.”

— Gabriela Denise Frank, Author of Pity She Didn’t Stay ’Til the End



“Carter opens a door into a new way of seeing by deriving poems from the cacophony of everyday language that swirls around us. Once again, Carter shows her extraordinary talent—she is a poet that ‘glows in the dark.’”

— Heidi Seaborn, Author of An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe and Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do}

About the Author:

Pamela Hobart Carter is a teacher, artist, and writer with two geology degrees. Her plays have been read or produced in Seattle (her home), Montreal (her childhood home), and Fort Worth. Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, Carter is the author of the chapbooks Her Imaginary Museum (Kelsay Books, 2020) and Held Together with Tape and Glue (Finishing Line Press, 2021).

Website: https://playwrightpam.wordpress.com