For and Against

Shortlisted, Next Generation Indie Book Award

Heart-corroding sex with a tin woodman. A foundering marriage like a cat on the brink of death that still manages to purr. Sharon McCartney's visceral exploration of relationships -- how they begin and end, the tenuous threads that hold people together, and the events that can tear them apart -- is unstinting, eyes-wide-open aware. Beginnings, endings, transitions: none elude the sometimes sardonic but always sinuous language of these finely wrought poems.