Receipt - by Karen Leona Anderson (Paperback)

About the Book

"In her second collection, Karen Leona Anderson transforms apparently prosaic documents - recipes and receipts - into expressions of human identity. From eighteenth-century cookbooks to the Food Network, the recipe becomes a site for definition and disclosure. Like a theatrical script, the recipe directs action and conjures characters. Grace Kelly at a party. In these poems, the pie is a cultural artifact and Betty Crocker, icon of domesticity, looms large. From the little black dress ($49.99 Nordstroms) to an epidural ($25.00 co-pay), Anderson reveals life in the twenty-first century to be equally hampered and enabled by expenditures. Amidst personal and domestic economies, wildness proliferates - bats, deer, ocelots, and fungus - reminding the reader that not all can be assimilated, eaten, or spent. Receipt is like the lovechild of Anne Sexton and Adam Smith, illuminating the ways in which our lives are both constrained by pieces of paper, and able to slip through the crevices of cultural detritus down to the rich current of animal feeling beneath"--

Book Synopsis

"Deft and insightful." --WASHINGTON POST

In her "resonant and witty" (Washington Post) second collection, Karen Leona Anderson transforms apparently prosaic documents--recipes and receipts--into expressions of human identity. From eighteenth-century cookbooks to the Food Network, the recipe becomes a site for definition and disclosure. In these poems, the pie is a cultural artifact and Betty Crocker, icon of domesticity, looms large. And like a theatrical script, the recipe directs action and conjures characters: Grace Kelly at a party. Shoppers at a postapocalyptic mall. From the little black dress ($49.99 at Nordstrom) to an epidural ($25.00 co-pay), Anderson reveals life in the twenty-first century to be equally hampered and enabled by expenditures. Amidst personal and domestic economies, wildness proliferates--bats, deer, ocelots, and fungus--reminding the reader that not all can be assimilated, eaten, or spent.

Receipt is like the lovechild of Anne Sexton and Adam Smith, illuminating the ways in which our lives are both constrained by pieces of paper, and able to slip through the crevices of cultural detritus down to the rich current of animal feeling beneath.

Review Quotes

Praise for Receipt:

Our consumer culture isn't pretty, as Anderson reminds us, yet her writing is so deft and insightful that the work is resonant and witty.--Washington Post

Karen Leona Anderson knows that at the very base of our sophistications we hold true to the fundaments of our animal nature: appetite and display. Part recipe book, part ledger, part lyric-eyed anthropological investigation, part confession, part carnival, part come-on, Receipt--with wit and candor and unexpected compassion--reveals those rituals both deep and tawdry by which the human condition persists in pursuit of what it most wants: beauty, love, food, sex, the big box store called Beyond, the little box store called Home.--Dan Beachy-Quick

Karen Leona Anderson doesn't miss a beat as she traces our consumerisms--economic, sexual, spiritual, and more--with irony, wit, sadness and more than a little humor. Receipt is, quite simply, a terrific book.--Linda Bierds

With a lexical panache and formal liveliness, Receipt makes of personal and domestic travails wondrous record. These poems, fiercely wrought, honor the fragility of the human heart in the daily occasion while flaunting the supreme powers of artistic invention. How thrilling such skill and spirit wanders the same aisles as we do!--Dean Young

Where lesser poets might stop at the gimmick, Anderson unravels each garment until we're left with the barest, most essential questions: What does it mean to be a human (woman) in this world?--Shelf Awareness

I hope we see more from this artist with her stylish ideas about society. She's full tone and full tilt; and yet keeps centered in her emotional projections with wonderful accuracy of language.--Washington Independent Review of Books

About the Author

Karen Leona Anderson grew up in Connecticut. She received an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop, an M.A. from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and her Ph.D. from Cornell University, where she wrote a dissertation on poetry and science. Her work has appeared in "ecopoetics," "jubilat," "Verse," "Indiana Review," "Fence," "Volt," and other journals. She is an associate professor of English at St. Mary s College of Maryland."