On Paper
⋆ Poetry ⋆ Collage ⋆
On Paper ⋆ Poetry ⋆ Collage ⋆
Exhibitionist
from Lily Poetry Review Books
“How can I see a woman through her dark veil while the giant eyes of men fluoresce and skew the angles?” In one of Shari Caplan’s collages a cut gem opens its eye above a headless, armless figure - caught you looking. In her poems her eye like a searchlight traverses a world part carnival, part gallery, part strip club, where “ponies trollop around their stripper poles,” where every gaze seeks to pin down and define, every object eludes, subverts, and gazes back, and amid the contest she illuminates possibilities of intimacy and the shared constructions of love: “We descend, new man, new bride, agreeing/to bring only ourselves into the cave...”
—Martha McCollough, author of Wolf Hat Iron Shoes.
Slip into this book like you would the halls of a gallery, except here you’re allowed to touch. Try on mask after mask; see how they nestle against your face. Here, there are exhibits of your favorite artists: Frida Khalo, Leonora Carrington, Faith Ringgold, but also whole wings of virgin queens and armless goddesses. Rooms of writers like Vita Sackville-West and actors like Tippi Hedren. Women from stories you wear close to your skin: Titania, the Little Mermaid, Odette from Swan Lake. Caplan expertly interrogates and subverts the concept of the fe/male gaze: who is looking, who is being looked at, and the potency in that relationship. You’ll want to linger in this gallery, even in the shadows. You’ll need to return.
- Dayna Patterson, author of O Lady, Speak Again
“Enthralled by the luscious-articulate, along with the minds of these poems we plunge. Shari Caplan’s Exhibitionist uplifts my own personal belief that mind and body together conduct themselves as sensuous parallels. These are poems that defy boundaries, delight in upending all those numbing norms, and show us that the paths to pleasure, intellectual and corporeal, meet at the juncture of poetic sublime. I thank Caplan for taking me there and for bringing me back. ”
- Cate Marvin, author of Event Horizon, Oracle
The Red Shoes; a phantasmagoric ballet on paper
from Lambhouse Books.
“Shari Caplan's The Red Shoes weaves a theatrical tapestry that's as wonderfully strange as it is beautiful. A haunting, vibrant panorama of artistic obsession, queer self-discovery, and chosen community—this lyric meditation on a classic tale is not just a retelling, it's a reclamation.”
- Janaka Stucky, founding editor of Black Ocean, author of The World Will Deny It for You, The Truth Is We Are Perfect, Ascend Ascend & Ekphrastic Beasts.
“A feminine rhapsody, bound in satin ribbon; a proscenium of yearning—Shari Caplan’s fevered retelling of The Red Shoes dances in the mind (and heart and lungs and feet) long after the final words have pirouetted across the page, bright and unapologetic as a flame.”
- GennaRose Nethercott, author of The Lumberjack’s Dove, Thistlefoot, & Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart.
“I’ve never seen language dance as beautifully as it does across the pages of Shari Caplan’s The Red Shoes. In itself, this chapbook is a “spotlight an embryo with a dancer inside". To read this work is an experience of the mind that cannot be confined to paper alone.”
- Kailey Tedesco, author of She Used to Be on a Milk Carton, Lizzie, Speak, & FOREVERHAUS.
The Red Shoes Movietelling
This performance piece allows the multi-voiced text of Shari’s chapbook to be experienced.
The film here is “The Red Shoes” by Powell & Pressburger, with art direction of this section led heavily by Hein Heckroth with assistance from painter Patricia Neville.
Published Books
Lambhouse Books
Dancing Girl Press
Lily Poetry Review Books - Paul Nemser Prize Winner
Poetry to Read Online
“Tippi Hedren” Series
“The Female Gaze” Series
“Shari Caplan Calls Upon The Spirit of Angela Carter”
“Hitchcock Asks Tippi to Star in The Birds”
“Attic/Attack Scene with Birds”
“The Moon Moth Lives for a Week After Emerging”
“How Do I Love Thee”
“Pennsylvania Wedding”
Magic Glue Collage
⋆ Visions of Magical Existence ⋆
Magic Glue Collage ⋆ Visions of Magical Existence ⋆
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Wildflower Goddess
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Magic Mirror
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Protection Charm
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The Cup That Never Empties
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Flower Vertigo
