A CURIOUS HUNGER, poetry by Marcia LeBeau

Publication Date: April 30, 2024

Paperback, 78 pages

ISBN: 978-1-956782-67-7

$22.50 retail, $17.50 from publisher

In the title poem of her debut collection, Marcia LeBeau admits that she wants to be “as popular as a spoon,” that ubiquitous bit of cutlery always first to empty out of the drawer, the one guaranteed to “cause a stir” (a nice example of her cleverness with language). She chooses Team Spoon most of all for “the beauty / of the tool” and for the “Evidence of the artist, the dreamer, the crazy cook— / the one who understands our curious hunger.” LeBeau is all those things, who not only understands our (sometimes not quite licit) hungers, but is not afraid to express them, unflinchingly. She warns of “Temptation” in the poem that inspires the octopus on her cover, invoking the image of a stuffed animal in “the claw machine at the mall” as metaphor both for what is “impossible” but also, if attained, just possibly “a grotesqueness beyond your tar dark / dreams.” Even so, we cannot escape the impulse to “carry the impossible home.” And that, she tells us throughout this forthright volume, is our greatest hunger: for curiosity itself, “the way we wanted everything.”

Praise for Marcia LeBeau & A Curious Hunger

Marcia LeBeau’s poems are a wide and searching journey through marriage, motherhood and desire, guiding us “to the volcano in the endless light.” These poems make you feel like you’re not alone, but with a warm and exacting guide. Even if “my hands/ are stained blue, glitter flecks my clothes,” I feel enriched—grateful for this debut collection that is refreshingly honest and utterly charming.

—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Bite by Bite

Marcia LeBeau’s sassy, kaleidoscopic debut volume of poetry, A Curious Hunger, explodes with energy. The poems blast off the page, fueled by all facets of women at work—from commuter trains to breast pumping. With humor and a savage eye for hypocrisy LeBeau juxtaposes the significant with the potently small. A devastating storm vies with a 7-Eleven Slurpee. A fierce mother’s fear for her son on one page softens to a mindful appreciation of a violin maker on another. From romance to the afterlife, with bravery (and bravado) everything Marcia LeBeau touches comes electrically alive in her indelible poems.

—Molly Peacock, author of The Widow’s Crayon Box

Marcia LeBeau’s poems in A Curious Hunger combine grace with courage. Her lines are poised and deft while also bravely exploring complications of emotion…. [T]ension between desire and propriety lights up many poems in the book—when you read for instance “Prenup” and “Temptation” and “The Love Poem” … you feel that LeBeau has trusted you enough to let you experience the tension and seek healthy responses to it; you are excited and grateful.

—Mark Halliday, author of Thresherphobe

About the Author

Marcia LeBeau is a multidisciplinary artist. Her poems, essays and reviews have been published in O, The Oprah Magazine, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Painted Bride Quarterly, Moon City Review, and elsewhere. She was a third-place co-winner of the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Award, was longlisted for the 2022 Ralph Angel Prize, and received an honorable mention for the Rattle Poetry Prize. Her work has also received several Pushcart Prize nominations. She has an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the founder of The Write Space, a co-working and event space for creative writers in The Valley Arts District of Orange, New Jersey. She lives with her husband and two sons in South Orange, New Jersey.