Black Box

"Belieu's poems use a vernacular of their own to suggest a noir world of erotic innuendo and red lights waiting to be run."-Neon

Black Boxis a raw, intense book, fueled by a devastating infidelity. With her marriage shattered, Erin Belieu sifts the wreckage for the black box, the record of disaster. Propelled by a blistering and clarifying rage, she composed at fever pitch and produced riveting, unforgettable poems, such as the ten-part sequence "In the Red Dress I Wear to Your Funeral":

I root through your remains,
looking for the black box. Nothing left
but glossy chunks, a pimp's platinum
tooth clanking inside the urn. I play you
over and over, my beloved conspiracy,
my personal Zapruder film-look. . .

When Belieu was invited by the Poetry Foundation to keep a public journal on their new website, readers responded to the Black Boxpoems, calling them "dark, twisted, disturbed, and disturbing"and Belieu a "frightening genius."All true.

"Titled after the flight-data recording devices analyzed in plane-crash investigations, Belieu's forceful third collection examines the wreckage of interpersonal disaster, chiefly a nasty marital breakup: 'there wasn't a ribald// particular I didn't come to know:// the yoga instructress on Valentine's Eve,/ the xeroxed erotica files// arranged by body part.' The poems' formal composure belies an anger so thoroughgoing it threatens at times to become simplistic ('This day's so blue, so pretty, let's smash it under glass'), but an equally relentless black humor shows the poet knows she's acting out. Belieu (One Above, One Below, 2000) is also interested in how emotional extremity makes shameless performers of us all, an observation dramatized in the book's astonishing centerpiece, the longer poem 'In the Red Dress I Wear to Your Funeral.' Here the poet imagines a broken marriage as a car crash you only half survive, unleashing a fury so spectacular it takes on the dimensions of myth: 'I lift my scarlet tail above your grave/ and let the idiot villagers take me/ in torchlight/ one by one by one by one....'" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Infidelity inspired Erin Belieu's third book--an angry, fast-paced, and lyrical tour-de-force

Poetry. BLACK BOX is a raw, intense book, fueled by a devastating infidelity. With her marriage shattered, Erin Belieu sifts the wreckage for the black box, the record of disaster. Propelled by a blistering and clarifying rage, she composed at fever pitch and produced riveting, unforgettable poems, such as the ten-part sequence "In the Red Dress I Wear to Your Funeral." When Belieu was invited by the Poetry Foundation to keep a public journal on their new website, readers responded to the BLACK BOX poems, calling them "dark, twisted, disturbed, and disturbing" and Belieu a "frightening genius." See also ONE ABOVE AND ONE BELOW and INFANTA, both available from SPD.