Book Details:
- Format: Softcover
- Title: Quiet Kid
- Author: Grace Carras
- Publisher: Finishing Line Press
- Genre: Poetry
- Release Date: 11 August 2020
- Length: 36 pages
- Rating: 5-stars
Review:
Never have I experienced such raw power and emotion from 36 pages as I did while reading the work of Grace Carras. Her perfectly crafted scenes and imagery, the way she displays her emotions – all of it! – is nothing less than beautiful. If there’s one book of poetry you read this year, make sure it’s this book. You won’t be disappointed.
Afterthought:
I learned about Grace Carras through TikTok. I didn’t imagine that a few months later I’d be pre-ordering her book of poetry. I posted one of her poems during my National Poetry Month celebration.
Upon listening to “For the Quiet Kids Who Have Been Told Speak Up” for the first time, I was transported to at time when my voice was still lay undiscovered: “remember the days you went without speaking at all…//those days you became the word absence/when you learned to hate the sound of your own laugh.” The same feeling over came me when I read the words for the first time.
In “For the Poets Who Gather Here,” I immediately transported to my first nights at the Nueva Onda Poet’s Cafe as Amado called my name for that first open mic night: “this is for you,/who overcome the trembling/dance of your own pulse/to blossom in the stage light.”
Though nothing prepared me for the strength found in the lines of the book’s final poem – “Someday I’ll Love You Grace Carras”: “…you’re gonna take/this life/with all of its punches/and shake like you’re dancing.”
Quiet Kid is one of those books that will outlast its generation. It would be a crime for it to go unread and forgotten.
Also See:
- Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson
- Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith
- Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
- Depression & Other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim
- If My Body Could Speak by Blythe Baird
