The WaPo reviews Mary Karr’s book of poetry, reflective of her conversion to Catholicism

If you appreciated the irreverent voice of Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club , you can find it again in "Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer," the afterword to her fourth book of poems, Sinners Welcome . Chronicling a move from "undiluted agnosticism" to tempered Catholicism, Karr begins, "To confess my unlikely Catholicism in Poetry — the journal that first published some of the godless twentieth-century disillusionaries of J. Alfred Prufrock and his pals — feels like an act of perversion kinkier than any dildo-wielding dominatrix could manage on HBO’s ‘Real Sex Extra.’ " But poetry, with its penchant for image as well as idea, has always served as a bridge between the sacred and the mundane, so it is no surprise that Karr, a poet long before she wrote her well-known memoir, turned to her roots when life seemed to have turned its back on her. However, it took her son’s desire to attend church — "to see if God’s there" — to get Karr into the congregation.

Here’s Karr’s "Finding My Religion" interview with the SanFranGate from a month ago.

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