What critics say: “From satirizing the mechanics of the American workplace to discovering motherly devotion in the myth of Persephone, Carole Bernstein’s third poetry collection Buried Alive: A To-Do List takes readers through caves and coffins alike, showing what living things still kick inside the previously presumed-dead.”
— Claire Oleson, Cleaver Magazine
“Carole Bernstein’s gorgeous poems are unsentimental, witty, acerbically and hilariously skeptical of nature, of sex, religion, product placement, virtue-signaling-and of herself. She takes a stand for the fierce, exasperating messiness of life against abusive ideals of perfection. Preemptively mourning everything she loves, holding off death by any and all means, tending to deep griefs in secret, her compassion masquerades as a silent rebuke to the naïve, the uninformed, the as-yet unbereaved, about their own embarrassing, dangerous hopes. This wonderful book stokes in me a furnace of purifying rage against all the molesting assholes, against the new Nazis and the old ones, and against onrushing darkness in all its forms. I will follow this ferocious, reluctantly tender voice anywhere. ”
— Patrick Donnelly, author of Little-Known Operas
“Finely rendered details are things buried alive in the living and breathing, vibrant poems of Carole Bernstein, where we encounter family portraits; teenage memories (cutting school, loving Rusty Staub); quotidian, often-overlooked bits of our long days; the frank vicissitudes of pregnancy; the tiny sorrows of parenting; and always, always, a rare view of what Bernstein calls “domestic interiors” in lyric phrasings sometimes as warm as a cat in bed, sometimes as lost as a neglected fuzzy pink unicorn. Reading these poems makes me want to order pizza using reverse osmosis.”
— Al Filreis, Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania
“Carole Bernstein’s book, Buried Alive: A To-Do List, is full of edgy humor, a sardonic tongue-in-cheek tone, mingled with the ability to tell the truth about even the most uncomfortable memories and tell it straight. I love the wild energy of this book and the poet’s willingness to take chances. I love the sense that the poet’s unique and tensile use of language creates an unforgettable book. ”
— Maria Mazziotti Gillan, American Book Award Winner
