She Hands Me the Razor
Poems by Richard Krawiec
A Tom Lombardo Poetry Selection
8.5 x 5.5 paperback, 88 pages
ISBN 978-1-935708-36-0
$12
RICHARD KRAWIEC has published two novels, a collection of stories, four plays, and a chapbook. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and the North Carolina Arts Council (twice). His poems and stories appear in Sou’wester, many mountains moving, Shenandoah, Witness, West Branch, North Carolina Literary Review, Florida Review, Cream City Review, and dozens of other magazines. His feature articles have won national and regional awards. He teaches online at UNC Chapel Hill, where he won the 2009 Excellence in Teaching Award. He is the founder of Jacar Press, a Community Active Literary Publisher.
The poems of Richard Krawiec are not unflinching. The things they discover, observe, and reveal might cause anyone to flinch. But this poet does not avert his gaze; he sees and endures and at last achieves a dearly bought and perhaps unexpected grace. I admire this collection enormously because I never doubted, always thinking, "Yes, this is how it must have been." Powerful experiences powerfully rendered with an art that seems almost casual. I salute this high, rude accomplishment." — Fred Chappell, former North Carolina Poet Laureate and author of Shadow Box: Poems
The razor in the title poem of this stunning collection can inflict pain or instill trust. It shaves away layers of duplicity and complicity, revealing the lies of love, the love of lies. There are no nicks in these poems. They slice into the very heart of life. — Gloria Vando, author of Shadows and Supposes
Richard Krawiec’s She Hands Me the Razor is a moody collection of poems that is largely concerned with circumference. Thus, these poems summon Emily Dickinson, who wrote in a letter, “How lonely this world is growing, something so desolate creeps over the spirit and we don't know its name.” In the title poem, the poet realizes that “it is always a matter of finding / another’s boundaries / one’s own limits,” and so it is in nebulous territory where these poems do their work of examining how one deals with existential darkness, where they try their damnedest to disavow the notion that it is irreparable damage that defines the contemporary human condition. — John Hoppenthaler, editor of Connotation Press and author of Anticipate the Coming Reservoir
She Hands Me the Razor is an edgy and satisfying marriage of tenderness and well-honed attentiveness to the connections, often fraying, among people and the various places in which they find themselves, both physically and emotionally...The poems in She Hands Me the Razor ferry us through dangerous waters, leaving us finally upon the shore of grace, that infusion of morning light on a loved face. W.H. Auden wrote, In Memory of W. B. Yeats: "In the prison of his days/ Teach the free man how to praise." Krawiec's new collection of poems culminates in praise, which has always been the goal and gift of poetry. — Kathryn Stripling Byer, former North Carolina Poet Laureate and author of Coming to Rest: Poems
Praise for She Hands Me the Razor
Add $3 for S&H
NC Residents pay sales tax
Samantha Tran graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Sociology and currently works for Dell, Inc. as a software specialist. She picked up photography as a hobby about two years ago and hasn’t looked back since.
“I enjoy taking pictures of things that make people look at life the way I see it, or at least from my perspective,” she says. “I also enjoy doing self-portraiture, and while that sounds horribly narcissistic, it’s actually very cathartic to put yourself out there in photos to be critiqued and judged. It can also be easier than regular portraiture in that I don't have to try and communicate to anyone what I see in my mind’s eye.
“For ‘Rub-A-Dub-Dub,’ I really liked the light in that bathroom, the way it bounced around the bathtub from the privacy glass above. I like photos with an open-ended story to them. Nobody knows what the girl in the tub looks like, or why she is there. It's open to interpretation. I think that always makes for a good photo.”
Samantha is actively building her portfolio with plans to start her own photography business. To see more of Samantha’s photography, visit www.flickr.com/photos/samanntran.
Press 53 . PO Box 30314, Winston-Salem, NC 27130-0314
Press 53 is located at
The Community Arts Cafe
411 W. Fourth St
Winston-Salem, NC 27101
Richard Krawiec
