Poetry. FAMOUS LAST WORDS, Catherine Pierce's debut book of poetry, is the winner of the 2007 Saturnalia Book Prize selected by John Yau. The book is arranged into three sections, the third of which features poems that are each entitled with the dying words of a famous, often historic, individual.

"With a marvelously open-hearted candor, Catherine Pierce troubles both the past and future—the homelands of her lyric art—as much as she summons them into life. 'Be kind to old photographs,' one poem tells us, 'but not overly kind.' Where other poets are flip, she's seriously playful; where other poets are timid, she's determined to engage the particulars behind which experience hides. Even more remarkably, the poems in this collection somehow manage to sing the way their subjects think, and the tone of that voice enlightens everything it touches."—Sherod Santos

"Catherine Pierce gets to the conundrum of language; we want to believe what it says and we don't believe it. She understands our need to tell tall stories, to exaggerate and embellish, to become figures that we are not, but wish to be. Her empathy for the abject in us is always riddled with humor, self-mocking, sharp, and, at times, painful. Recognizing that words can be both a solace and an accuser, Pierce walks that tightrope with grace."—John Yau

Author City: STARKVILLE, MS USA

Catherine Pierce is the author of THE GIRLS OF PECULIAR (Saturnalia Books, 2012) and FAMOUS LAST WORDS (Saturnalia Books, 2008). Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2011. She lives in Starkville, Mississippi, where she co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.

Reviews and Other Links
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Patrick Kanouse @ Gently Read Literature