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Also by Mary Karr:

The Art of Memoir, September 2015
Hardcover / e-Book
Lit, November 2009
Hardcover
Sinners Welcome, March 2006
Hardcover
The Liars' Club, June 2005
Trade Size (reprint)
Cherry, September 2001
Trade Size (reprint)

SINNERS WELCOME
By: Mary Karr

Collection of Poems

HarperCollins
March 2006
112 pages
ISBN: 0060776544
Hardcover
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Fiction Poetry

Mary Karr describes herself as a black-belt sinner, and this -- her fourth collection of poems --traces her improbable journey from the inferno of a tormented childhood into a resolutely irreverent Catholicism. Not since Saint Augustine wrote "Give me chastity, Lord -- but not yet!" has anyone brought such smart-assed hilarity to a conversion story.

Karr's battle is grounded in common loss (a bitter romance, friends' deaths, a teenage son's leaving home) as well as in elegies for a complicated mother. The poems disarm with the arresting humor familiar to readers of her memoirs, The Liars' Club and Cherry. An illuminating cycle of spiritual poems have roots in Karr's eight-month tutelage in Jesuit prayer practice, and as an afterword, her celebrated essay on faith weaves the tale of how the language of poetry, which relieved her suffering so young, eventually became the language of prayer. Those of us who fret that poetry denies consolation will find clear-eyed joy in this collection.

Media Buzz

Fresh Air - NPR - June 13, 2006