Eleanor Mary Boudreau
Praise
“Please forgive the public nature of this postcard” writes Eleanor Boudreau, spilling tea on love and its reckless participants. It's a wet business, like dry cleaning. It's a combination of two very elements held together in suspension, like smoke (or rubber?) And it is the thriving pulse of these desultory postcards from the edge of an affair's landscape of exile and afterhood. What a witty, glorious, and bittersweet book. I am here for all of it.
—D. A. Powell
Or perhaps you'd prefer to purchase from your local bookstore using Indie Bound . . .
In Earnest, Earnest?, the speaker, Eleanor, writes postcards to her on-again-off-again lover, Earnest. The fact that her lover’s name is Earnest and that their relationship is fraught, raises questions of sincerity and irony, and whether both can be present at the same time. While Earnest can be read literally as Eleanor’s lover, he is best understood as another side of the poet’s self. The ambiguity at play in Earnest, Earnest? is embodied in the form of the “Earnest Postcards” that structure the book—these postcards are experimental in their use of images and formal in their dialogue with the sonnet. Thus, Earnest, Earnest? is a question of tone, address, and form.
More Praise
Eleanor Boudreau's Earnest, Earnest? is made of the explosions and murmurings of an inner voice as a human mind tries to figure out intimacy, the edges of entities, the actualities of the world and of memory and, maybe especially, tone . . . is Earnest real, and is he actually earnest? We could ask ourselves about everything, forever. This is exactly the right question, I think.
—Sarah Vap
Media Coverage
"In Their Own Words: Eleanor Boudreau on 'Scatter Plot.'" Poetry Society of America, 2020.
https://poetrysociety.org/features/in-their-own-words/on-scatter-plot.
“How It's Made: Eleanor Boudreau's Earnest, Earnest?" Frontier Poetry, 8 December 2020.
https://www.frontierpoetry.com/2020/12/08/how-its-made-eleanor-boudreau/.
“The Making of Earnest, Earnest?" Interview and Intro by Esteban Rodríguez. EcoTheo Review, 20 November 2020.
https://archive.ecotheo.org/earnest-earnest/.
“Eleanor Boudreau's Playlist for her Poetry Collection Earnest, Earnest?" Largehearted Boy, 10 October 2020.
http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2020/10/eleanor_boudrea.html.
“Exclusive Q&A with Eleanor Boudreau" Harvardwood, 1 September 2020.
https://www.harvardwood.org/exclusive_qa_boudreau/.
Interview by Thomas Whyte. Poetry Mini Interviews, 19 March 2020.
http://poetryminiinterviews.blogspot.com/2020/03/eleanor-boudreau-part-one.html.
Hoffert, Barbara. “Versifying | Collection Development: Poetry.” Library Journal, 17 January 2020.
https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=ljx200101poetrycolldev.
Earnest, Earnest? is included under “Young Prize Winners”
“The nearly 100 titles previewed here represent some of the best work coming in 2020 while effectively telling the story of poetry. Addressing key themes from political disenchantment to sexual identity, these prize winners and rising stars should prove to be keepers.” — Barbara Hoffert