Flop Era: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) - Softcover

Egger, Lara

This title will be released on October 21, 2025

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822967588 ISBN 13: 9780822967583

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025

Synopsis

<i>Flop Era</i> reckons with the complications of being human, and therefore, with the consequences of being fundamentally flawed. It contends with failed potential and the certain uncertainty of the future, while interrogating the past for clues that might explain why, as the speaker bemoans, “there are never enough nails in the coffin of poor choices.” While Egger throws confetti on the quotidian, she disarms the reader with earnestness and vulnerability. Rich in metaphor, affable and self-deprecating, the poems in <i>Flop Era </i>shine a spotlight on regret, infidelity, the feminine ideal, fear of death, and fear of insignificance.

About this title

About the Author

<b>Lara Egger </b>is the author of <i>How to Love Everyone and Almost Get Away with It</i>, which received the Juniper Prize for Poetry and the John C. Zacharis First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in <i>Ploughshares</i>,<i> Bennington Review</i>,<i> Conduit</i>,<i> The Southern Review</i>,<i> </i>and elsewhere. Egger is the recipient of a fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and her poems won the <i>Arts &amp; Letters</i> Rumi Prize for Poetry. Egger lives in Watertown, Massachusetts.<i></i>

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

<b>EXCERPT from Flop Era by Lara Egger, </b><br><b>POEM: Regret is Not a Pipe, Pg. 32</b><br><br>REGRET IS NOT A PIPE<br><br>And on the menu is not an all-you-can-eat<br>buffet of second chances. Surely as I looked<br>in the mirror this morning and saw beauty<br><br>slumped over like a wind-up doll; surely<br>as my heart’s a footnote, say,<br>or that slant of light without a prism.<br><br>The moon straps on its stilts and wades<br>through the drowning city. The sky, too, has legs.<br>Like many of us, forgets to use them.<br><br>The first time I had sex was in a restroom<br>at Pizza Hut. My greatest disappointment?<br>He didn’t write my name on the toilet stall.<br><br>Though the past, I admit, isn’t exactly easy reading,<br>the future’s a parking meter and these days<br>who carries quarters? Regret isn’t a pipe—<br><br>you can’t stuff it or smoke it. Just as I couldn’t stop<br>that wave, mid-crest, and deliver it back<br>to an unbroken sea . . .

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822967588
• ISBN 13: 9780822967583
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120