Flop Era - (Pitt Poetry) by Lara Egger (Paperback)

About the Book

Poetry at the Crossroads of the Ecstatic and the Profane

Book Synopsis

Flop Era reckons with the complications of being human, and therefore, with the consequences of being fundamentally flawed. It contends with failed potential and the certain uncertainty of the future, while interrogating the past for clues that might explain why, as the speaker bemoans, "there are never enough nails in the coffin of poor choices." While Egger throws confetti on the quotidian, she disarms the reader with earnestness and vulnerability. Rich in metaphor, affable and self-deprecating, the poems in Flop Era shine a spotlight on regret, infidelity, the feminine ideal, fear of death, and fear of insignificance.

Review Quotes

Lara Egger's Flop Era is constantly surprising, a feverish consciousness issuing impressions at breakneck speed, the confessional poem as a testing ground in which the associative-surreal (a compound word I was forced to invent for Egger's work alone) becomes a baseline for reality, something the speaker cannot quite decide whether to accept or reject. Also: Is it me or everyone else? she asks. Egger's poems are full of volatility and hunger, invention and wisdom, humor and wit, evasion and honesty. It's high-voltage stuff--sometimes sexy, sometimes heartbreaking--for sure. You'll likely read Flop Era straight through and keep it in your to-reread pile for months, years...--David Dodd Lee, author of Downsides of Fish Culture and The Bay

In Lara Egger's Flop Era, the familiar is always teetering into the unfamiliar, but even more exciting is the way the unfamiliar tips into something palpable and all the more disquieting. 'Have you ever asked your doctor / if Ennui (R) is right for you?' she asks. These are poems of surprise that demand a reader feel the presence of a vivid and thinking mind. Egger offers us not just elegance but an emotional connection to a speaker who is 'something winged awash in a glass.'--C. Dale Young, author of Building the Perfect Animal

Flop Era is filled with poems of stunning impact. These are fast-talking, wise-cracking, and, at the same time, heartfelt works in which Lara Egger's inventive use of language is evident in almost every line. 'My imagination's fluent, ' she writes, and we see that claim borne out in the way she synthesizes angst and anguish with humor and intelligence. We wind up with hot-wired poems of striking complexity. A terrific collection!--Terence Winch, author of That Ship Has Sailed

Modern poetry readers who have ever thought, 'the future is best observed from a Ferris Wheel, ' will find Lara Egger's hair-trigger, rapid-fire associations in Flop Era full of hard-won truths like, 'darkness doesn't fall, but rises;' the pull of her poems taking readers for a satisfying and surprising carnival ride above the quotidian to glimpse the extraordinary.--Chris Banks, author of Deepfake Serenade

About the Author

Lara Egger is the author of How to Love Everyone and Almost Get away with It, which received the Juniper Prize for Poetry and the John C. Zacharis First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Bennington Review, Conduit, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Egger is the recipient of a fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and her poems won the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize for Poetry. Egger lives in Watertown, Massachusetts.