Description
Metrophobia
by Carolyn Martin
Metrophobia is a laugh-out-loud, deeply relatable collection from award-winning poet Carolyn Martin. Whether she’s blessing a feral cat, interrogating a dishwasher, or riffing on AI and aging, Martin busts the myth that poetry is just for scholars or romantics with quills.
With her signature blend of wit, tenderness, and sharp observation, Martin invites readers into a world where daily life becomes funny, fierce, surprising, and sacred. These are poems for readers who say “I don’t get poetry,” for writers who crave fresh inspiration, and for anyone who finds meaning in the mess.
A former nun and professor turned management trainer and poet, Martin brings decades of lived experience to these pages, infusing her work with humor, vulnerability, and insight into what it means to live fully, curiously, and creatively.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING…
Reading Carolyn Martin’s Metrophobia is like a late-night visit with an old friend. These poems are honest, wise, and fun. Martin turns familiar sayings upside down:“forget-to-do lists,” “earwitness,” “it goes with saying.” She shares days “when the couch won’t let go” and what it’s like to be 80 years old: “I’ll applaud each wrinkle, dark spot,/and white chin hair for showing up.” As we chuckle over cheese and Cabernet in the orange glow of the fireplace, we feel the same way—but Martin’s poems say it better.
—Sue Fagalde Lick, author of Blue Chip Stamp Guitar, The Widow at the Piano, and Dining Al Fresco with My Dog
Are you a librocubicularist: someone who reads in bed? I learned the word from Carolyn Martin, and wherever you read this book, you will smile, you will laugh out loud. Whether writing about cats, poetry, or a reporter talking to Saint Pete about the Sermon on the Mount, this poet is both witty and wise. As God says in this collection, “Yes! Yes! Oh, Yes!”
—Penelope Scambly Schott, author of ON DUFUR HILL and past recipient of Oregon Book Award for Poetry
I knew I was in for a treat from the title of Carolyn Martin’s new book—and the fun kept going with poems like “The Chinwagger’s Complaint” and “To My Soon-to-be-Favorite Advice Columnist.” Martin pulls off serious undertones with her steady wit woven into rich language. As she explores the joys and ironies of poetry and struts “shamelessly across any space/shouting abundant words without a blush,” we get to ride beside her and savor every moment.
—Joanne Durham, author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl
Metrophobia is also available to purchase:
Emily Newberry –
After reading Metrophobia by Carolyn Martin, I am still wandering back and forth along the sweetly bumpy path her images paint in my mind.
From the first poem, titled “Metrophobia” like the book, where wildly mixed imagery is followed by the invitation to a racing pulse/and wildly startled eyes; to the sharp humor of “To-My-Soon-To-Be-Favorite Advice Columnist” where Carolyn both questions and follows the usual advice-columnist creed of Stop complaining. Take responsibility; to the last poem, “Eighty,” where she promises to shout, “abundant words without an apparent blush,” I am left with one phrase: I resemble those remarks! A statement I make in a huff and with a giggle. Join me. Read this book. I think you will be delightfully annoyed and gratified all together.
Bruce Gunther –
“Metrophobia: An Irrational Fear of Poetry” is the perfect testament to Carolyn Martin’s gift of seeing and imagining the world through a unique perspective that’s equal parts joyful, soulful, inquisitive, and witty. Seemingly nothing escapes her keen eye and poetic craft – from feral cats, to interviews with Jesus, and to mortality statistics in 1632 London (“Death by Planet”). In her closing poem, “Eighty,” Carolyn promises to spend her next decade strutting “shamelessly across any space, shouting abundant words without an apparent blush.” I can’t wait.
Linda Ferguson –
In Carolyn Martin’s newest book, Metrophobia: an irrational fear of poetry, we get to see a poet at the height of her powers who gets chuffed over the endless possibilities of English. Whether she’s relishing the rhythm of alliteration (“clowder of cats”) or giving verbs deliciously surprising new jobs to do (wet clothes “sulk in a dryer’s drum” and cicadas “jackhammer” the air), Martin relishes playing with language. Sometimes that delight even takes a mischievous turn, as she writes about “chinwaggers” and “fopdoodles” or rebelliously uses plain speech (“popcorn and potato chips”) in juxtaposition to her bracing imagery (“brusque gusts of grief”).
Here, Martin is ready to toss out the rigid rulebook of life and writing in favor of being a bit of a “rabble rouser” who enjoys throwing people for a loop by telling them she’s a poet and setting a “statistics guy” straight. While her subjects are as wide ranging as spirituality, Gaza, an automated Sears service line, and the behavior of feral cats, above all else Martin ponders the idea of writing itself, from uncovering subjects in surprising places to the urgent need to scribble something down at 5 a.m. Even as her pages chortle with humor – like the titular poem, which discusses people who have a fear of poetry – Martin also uses her unique voice to slip in insights, such as when she writes, “humans on this wobbly earth/have muffed their cosmic test.” As she writes in “What the Buddha Said While Reading My Poems,” “Swim deeper/between the lines. Wisdom dives and waits.” With Metrophobia, there are worlds for writer and reader alike to explore in these thoughtful and utterly engaging waters.
Judith H. Montgomery, author of Mercy and The Ferry Keeper –
Such verve! Carolyn Martin revels in word and wit, with a close eye for incongruities, joys, and the raised eyebrow of the knowing poet. The poems in Metromania are nothing less than delightful! Notwithstanding the “fear of poetry” title, the reader is invited into sheer virtuosity of language and a playful sense of humor, tempered by the realities of the mortal life (“when poems proclaim/humans on this wobbly earth/have muffed their cosmic test”) and its vicissitudes. “A woman and her tools,” she says,” are invincible” as she chops and sautés garlic, aiming at bliss. Although one of the poems collected here is titled, “Ode to Doing Nothing,” in fact this poet is drawn again and again to pen and paper at any hour of the day. We are the lucky readers. Buy this book, and settle in for well-deserved pleasure. You will thank her, and yourself.