100 Notes on Violence

Back in print, Carr’s powerful poems seek out and face violence and its counterforces. Julie Carr obsessively researches instances of intimate terrorism, looking everywhere from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to lists of phobias and weapon-store catalogs. She searches for what can be learned from the statistics, the statements by and about rapists and killers, the websites of hate groups, and the capacity for cruelty that lies within all of us. 100 Notes on Violence is a diary, a document, and a dream log of the violence that grips America and devastates so many. But Carr also offers a layered and lyric tribute to violence’s counterforces: love, commonality, and care. Her unflinching “notes” provoke our minds and burrow into our emotions, leading us to confront our fears and our own complicity.