Drawn to Extinction by Carrie Hohmann Campbell

By turns intimate and goofy, Carrie Hohmann Campbell’s restless poems emerge from what she calls her “interior mumble.” Each poem operates in an imagined world of “broken anythings” that words must work to repair. Of course, language can only go so far.  These poems acknowledge that “Desire always exceeds its object,” but that doesn’t hinder their drive for invention, since they also know “the wave fills in the space it left behind.”

–Christopher Bakken

As in Shakespeare’s sonnets, Carrie Hohmann Campbell’s Drawn to Extinction beautifully examines love from multiple perspectives. From the romping, erotic affection for an unnamed “Cowboy,” to the despair of one trying to recall from the cosmos a young lover who has unexpectedly succumbed to tragedy, Ms. Campbell’s pitch-perfect examination of the varied emotional states of love resonates with a rare authenticity. Ms. Campbell is particularly sensitive to the difficulty of sustaining love in a postmodern age, and, without flinching, she explores how temptation, intellectual alienation, the loss of identity, and the fragility of the body threaten to make love extinct. Such precise and beautifully articulated meditations show us better how to navigate the joys and burdens of love’s difficult journey.

–Robert Bernard Hass

One of the beautiful things about Drawn to Extinction is that the poems add up to a story, a sad story and a sadly all too common one. But the really beautiful thing about it is Hohmann Campbell’s voice– it is palpably alive in front of you, and you feel that you’re in the room with her while she’s talking. Comparing herself to salt shakers and catfish and using other largely domestic metaphors she immediately creates a world the reader is welcomed into. To find out what happens after that, you’ll have to buy it.

–Matthew Rohrer