Poetry. Sharply drawn and lyrical, PERSPECTIVE WOULD HAVE US is the first full-length collection from poet Erica Carpenter. Carpenter is a Rhode Island native and received an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University in 1998. She is the author of a chapbook, Summoned to the Fences, and has published in a number of literary journals, including NO: A JOURNAL OF THE ARTS, LINGO and 26. "Thoughts to blood must always/in possible distinction talk.//Subject to instance, substance/weight, possibly-force, always;//and where are said breath, flight,/always the earthbound element/claims love//In other words (pictorial)/the difference in two hands/as pressed in prayer//and two hands flared, inverse,//the smallest digits locking wings."

Erica Carpenter was born in 1970, in Wickford, RI (a fishing village at the time, now turned boutique village). She got her BA at Vasser (1993), her MFA at Brown (1998). In between she traveled in the US as well as Turkey, Greece and the Czech Republic. She has managed antique shops and now works as a freelance writer and as a youth mentor in poetry at New Urban Arts Studio in Providence, RI.

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