Elegy For the Floater

"...in these poems, (there is) a family of 12 with the mother, father, and speaker as the prime characters....In a brilliant crown of sonnets, its most important character, the speaker's brother, who died a suicide, by drowning, fully emerges. The strictness of the form is never obtrusive--it just does its job...to give a frame, a tension, something for the powerful emotion to work off of or against, thus increasing its powerful sentiment...By writing this book...Teresa Carson has rescued her family and her brother. That a book of poems can do this is a miracle." --Thomas Lux

"These poems...convey with beauty and power the emotions that pour from loss, love, trauma, reconciliation and healing. It is difficult in an academic article or a clinical process to capture the full measure of what it is we seek to heal. But in these powerful poems...one can connect to a fragment of the pain, and hope, of Teresa Carson. Her words can teach. Teresa Carson is wise. She shares her wisdom in this remarkable book."
--Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Senior Fellow, The Child Trauma Academy

TERESA CARSON grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, as the youngest of ten in a blue-collar family. At eighteen she joined New Jersey Bell and before retiring in 2003, worked in a series of non-traditional-for-women jobs. In 2004 she earned an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She has never left Hudson County and now lives there with her husband John.