Description
Lost on Purpose is a universe of portals, a collection that offers the rare invitation to be both observer and intimate, taking in the reverie of landscape and lover, travel and art. Eschewing the stark, Head’s poems accomplish the remarkable: though they may seem effortless in their ease, they are distilled, compelling, and evocative, demonstrating a mastery that deepens their interiors with each reading. Refined in its sensibility, Lost on Purpose speaks to both images of solitude—and the honoring of the serene and contemplative—and the reverence of connection. Not without signature moments of Head’s knife-edged wit and observation, these poems move us through a tandem sense of joy and rebelliousness, urging us to step into new ways of being, to challenge our perceptions, “as subtle as the line between look and leap / between what we know and what we believe.” In Paris, in England, in the cosmos and in the garden, through the ekphrastic and the camera lens, Head’s poems open irresistible doors—reminding each of us to echo the affirmation, “where I’m from / will not dictate where I am going.”
Praise for Lost on Purpose
Karen Head’s Lost on Purpose gathers soft, still moments from a life well-travelled, in poems that traverse whole continents of feeling, studded with “tiny shocks of brilliance.” Smuggling in a strange contraband of stolen mementoes, Lost on Purpose delivers grains of truth from another time. Head offers the reader these touching, evanescent gifts: hard-won insights, quick flickers of joy, the smolder and flash from a sunset.
—Ivy Alvarez
There is nothing lost about the poems in this book—each one is an exquisite work, yes, but also each is filled with profound pleasure. The scope is global, panoramic, always expansive, yet one of the true achievements in Lost on Purpose by Karen Head is the ravishing intimacy on every page, in every line. Poems like these help me to better understand the world, my place in it, to find my way.
—Paul Guest
Lost on Purpose is both a travelogue and a declaration of love: it begins with the ecstatic image of man playing for the sheer ardor of music to the audience of roosters and air and river-water. It ends with a lyric that is also an elegy for all those years without the beloved. And in between these pages is the journey: Karen Head travels through time, through geography, and most of all through our emotional frontiers. This is a book of very beautiful poems, very humane and musical lyrics, yes. But it also creates a poetics that asks us not just to cross borders but to go through them, smashing those borders. Which is to say: this book of lyrics contains more fierce energy and emotional punch than most novels.
Lost on Purpose doesn’t just ask what it means to be happy in our miserable time, but sings it. There is a fearlessness in these lyrics, a bravery and honesty that is uncommon in this callous age. And, there is also wisdom: “I concede finding each other late was for the best. / Still, sometimes I mourn the years we never had / even the ones that would have destroyed us.” This is a book of poems to live with.
—Ilya Kaminsky
What a delight to read a collection in which new love, new landscapes, and renewed creativity all blossom unexpectedly in middle age. “And now in age I bud again,” wrote Herbert; “Even at our age this is fun,” answers Head across the centuries. Made all the sweeter by past suffering and the knowledge that time cannot be stopped, these poems renew the reader’s faith in possibility.
—Julie Kane
Of the many artfully composed poems in this book, I like especially “The Forgotten Woman,” which if it were to be matched up with Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” would fare well in the comparison. Head’s is a contemporary poetry that very skillfully mounts and then rides astride the great Percheron of the English tradition.
—Ted Kooser
