CARAPACE by Hallie Fogarty is, in short, a chapbook about bugs. Crawly bugs, ugly bugs, fuzzy bugs, lonely, smelly, worthlessly alive and stubbornly dead bugs. The poems’ speaker is helplessly aware of these bugs. In “Lying in Wait” and “Calling Things as They Are,” the speaker is disturbed by the fact that they are unable to look away from bug corpses, and at other times, they are in awe of the bugs’ liveliness, individuality and significance, as in “Elm” and “Cecropia Moth.” In turn, the speaker is disgusted by their own imperfect existence and disinterested in life, “Any entity worth discussing:/ disgusting, distrusting, disowned,” and yet deeply moved by the bugs’ perseverance and their own, “Even though/ the beautiful and strange make the pain more unbearable,/ I am one of the lucky ones: I no longer want to die.”

I think this chapbook makes a perfect transition from the death-like hibernation of winter to the strained and battered breaking of spring. As midwesterners, our winters are long and desperate and our springs–if we can even call them that–are never without its tribulations for people and nature, but the survivors emerge.

—Bella Gross, founder, editor, in-house artist & bookmaker for And Then Publishing

Purchase CARAPACE here.