Set in Stone

Carey’s poems tell stories—as dreams, as memories, as rituals or ceremonies. He embraces the mystery of nostalgia, worn and cemented by time, the haunted remembrances that string a life together. These are poems of place and of people (real and imagined); poems about summer ponds and barroom nights, basketball, religion, and superheroes; poems that remind us of our humanness; poems set in stone to be chipped away at carefully.

Kevin Carey is the Coordinator of Creative Writing at Salem State University. He has published three books – a chapbook of fiction,The Beach People(Red Bird Chapbooks) and two books of poetry from CavanKerry Press, The One Fifteen to Penn Station and Jesus Was a Homeboy, which was selected as an Honor Book for the 2017 Paterson Poetry Prize. Kevin is also a filmmaker and playwright. His latest documentary film, Unburying Malcolm Miller, about a deceased Salem, MA poet, premiered at the Mass Poetry Festival in 2016. His latest play “The Stand or Sal is Dead” a murder mystery comedy, opened in Newburyport, MA. at The Actor’s Studio on June 21st – 24th2018. A new collection of poems, Set in Stone, released in May of 2020. http://kevincareywriter.com

From “Set in Stone”

A train blows its horn
the light rising beyond the harbor,
a dog barks from a car window
and the nostalgia (always dangerous)
hits me like a left hook.
I’m trapped between the memory
and the moment,
the deal we make
if we make it this long,
the markers of a life,
the small worthwhile pieces
that rattle around in my pockets
waiting to be set somewhere in stone

From “A Long Line”

I come from a long line
of beach front vendors
caramel popcorn hawkers
bartenders fry cookers

A long line of coffee pushers
Crackerjack stumpers
cheeseburg makers

A long line of saw-dust
footed, hotdog dragging
cigarette smoking
liquor-swabbing drink men

When I think of a Kevin Carey poem, I think of Boston, and basketball, of poems carved out of the East Coast city where he has lived his life. In this, his third book, Carey has wrought arguably his finest work, including one of the most poignant poems of a friend’s suicide I have ever read. There are narratives here, list poems, lyrics, and elegies, a hint of Catholicism found in a mother’s rosary beads, a father praying after work, and the specificity of old Buicks and the Tobin Bridge. This is a book of powerful testaments that will offer any open reader, like in basketball, “that first good step” toward survival.
-Sean Thomas Dougherty, author of The Second O of Sorrow

In this collection, Carey examines the power of memory, the dreams we have, the praiseworthy moments, as well as the regrets that cling to us over a lifetime. Set in Stone shoots straight, with a voice that is natural and unaffected. You may see yourself in the small dark places of these poems, if you’re not too timid to look.
-Jeffrey Renard Allen, author of the novels Song of the Shank and Rails Under My Back

88 pages
Kevin Carey
Pub date – May 5, 2020
Trade paper – 6 X 9″
$16
ISBN 978-1-933880-79-2
Emerging Voices – Poetry