Crying Dress - by Cassidy McFadzean (Paperback)

About the Book

"Crying Dress, acclaimed poet Cassidy McFadzean's third book, is a collection of poetry exploring the multiplicity of meaning that arises from fragmentation, rhythm, competing sounds, and ellipsis. Rooted in the tradition of lyric poetry, these strikingly original poems revel in musicality (rhyme, beat, and alliteration) while deploying puns, idioms, and other forms of linguistic play to create a dissonance that challenges the expected narrative coherence of a poem. From the ghosts and gardens of Brooklyn and Sicily to the clanging of garbage chutes in Uno Prii's modernist high rises in Toronto, to quiet moments of intimacy in domestic spaces, and the early days of sobriety and grief, Crying Dress explores the intersections between noise and coherence, the conversational and the associative, the architectural and the ecological. These poems tease out moments of connection from inside the communicative failures of capitalist systems, while featuring the poet's sonic, vertiginous lyricism and gift for overlooked detail."--

Book Synopsis

The poems in Crying Dress, acclaimed poet Cassidy McFadzean's third collection, explore the multiplicity of meaning that arises from fragmentation, rhythm, competing sounds, and ellipsis. Rooted in the tradition of lyric poetry, these strikingly original poems revel in musicality (rhyme, beat, and alliteration) while deploying puns, idiom, and other forms of linguistic play to create a dissonance that challenges the expected coherence of a poem. From the ghosts and gardens of Brooklyn and Sicily to the clanging of garbage chutes in Uno Prii's modernist high rises in Toronto, to quiet moments of intimacy in domestic spaces, and the early days of sobriety and grief, Crying Dress explores the intersections between noise and coherence, the conversational and the associative, the architectural and the ecological, while reaffirming the poet's sonic, vertiginous lyricism and gift for overlooked detail.

Review Quotes

"The seasons in Crying Dress are as temporal as they are affective ... McFadzean creates the sensation of time unravelling on an individual level as the speaker moves across geographical spaces and emotional states." -- ARC Poetry

"The poems in Crying Dress are replete with linguistic play and bravura." -- Quill & Quire

"Cassidy McFadzean is a master of poetic form ... Each piece in this romantic and disturbing collection is a little room the reader can visit and return to." -- The Miramichi Reader

"Inventive, philosophical, and verbally playful ... McFadzean invites readers to the altar of her language." -- Publishers Weekly