New book from Deerbrook Editions: Visit To An Extinct City by Teresa Carson.
Visit to an Extinct City, first in the series The Argument of Time, reflects on the ruins of Ostia Antica. New forms of poetry in English and Italian (facing).
Endorsements can be found on the book page. Click the cover.
About The Argument of Time
The Argument of Time, a five-book series, was triggered by Teresa’s first visit to Ostia Antica in 2014. From the moment she stepped through the Porta Romana, the place had an inexplicable hold on her. Her daylong exploration of the ruins turned into a profound experience: everything in the landscape spoke to her. Back in her then-home in New Jersey, she wrote down the title of all five books in The Argument of Time without any idea of what the actual content of each book would be, except it would be connected to Ostia in some way and that the poems would exist in English and Italian.
Why Ostia?
Unlike the resort towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, Ostia was a commercial center that served as the main port for goods coming into Rome from everywhere in the Roman Empire. By the second century a.d. its landscape was a densely packed mix of warehouses, apartment houses, temples (for various religions), baths, toilets, bakeries, and take-out food shops. Its decline from prosperous to extinct happened over a few hundred years; by the eleventh century its marble was being scavenged to build cathedrals throughout Italy. For centuries after Ostia’s abandonment, treasure hunters scoured its ruins for desirable artifacts that ended up in private collections, museums, and even the Vatican. Fortunately for us there is still much to find in Ostia. Today, systematic excavations undertaken by scientists continue to reveal its complexities and marvels.
About Teresa Carson
Teresa Carson’s work centers on the themes of time, memory, and the stories we humans tell.
She holds an MFA in Poetry and an MFA in Theatre, both from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the author of four collections of poetry: Elegy for a Floater (CavanKerry Press, 2008); My Crooked House (CavanKerry Press, 2014), which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize; The Congress of Human Oddities (Deerbrook Editions, 2015); and Visit to an Extinct City (Deerbrook Editions, 2021).
She lives in Florida, where she co-curates two programs aimed at fostering cross-disciplinary collaborations and putting art into public settings: The Unbroken Thread[s] Project and Art in Common Places. She frequently contributes her ideas about poetry on the CavanKerry Press blog and in a weekly “poem blast” la poesia della settimana.
Teresa Carson Website: http://www.teresacarson.com/
