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Danger Face, the recipient of the 2024 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize, is a profound exploration of family and legacy through the lens of C.W. Emerson's evocative poetry.
This collection delves into the intricate web of familial ties-examining the cards we're dealt, the curses and inheritances from generations past, and the impact of these legacies on our lives. Emerson's poetry illuminates these themes with striking clarity, revealing the weight of ancestral ghosts, weaknesses, and addictions.
Emerson skillfully employs persona and first-person narratives to blend the spectral with the magical, intertwining the extraordinary with the everyday. He begins by tracing the matrilineal line, where figures such as divas, mothers, and great-grandmothers emerge, vanish, and reappear. The collection then shifts to the poet's own journey, from childhood experiences at race tracks and country auctions to grappling with heart disease and mortality in adulthood. As Danger Face unfolds, the setting moves to Mexico, reflecting on themes of artistic ambition and the formation of new familial bonds later in life.
Fearlessly confronting both the unsettling and the tender, Emerson invites us to reveal our true selves with his call to "show me your true self, your danger face." At the same time, he tenderly portrays the depth of lived experience, as seen in his depiction of the diva's voice-"each note containing all the pathos of a full life, richly lived, an existence / that was nothing she could have planned."
In its unique voice, Danger Face captures the vibrant energy of youth and the unpredictable nature of adulthood, engaging with profound themes of family, home, transience, and the will to persist.
