McFadzean, Cassidy: Crying Dress

Description

House of Anansi Press, paperback

Publication Date: April 2, 2024

Publisher Marketing: Crying Dress explores the intersections between noise and coherence, the conversational and the associative, the architectural and the ecological. 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.