Books

Praise for Exhibitionist

“How can I see a woman through her dark veil while the giant eyes of men fluoresce and skew the angles? In one of Shari Caplan’s collages a cut gem opens its eye above a headless, armless female torso: caught you looking. In her poems her eye like a searchlight traverses a world part carnival, part gallery, part strip club, where ponies trollop around their stripper poles, where there’s a different girl on every horse, where every gaze seeks to pin down and define, every object eludes, subverts, and gazes back, and amid the contest she illuminates possibilities of intimacy and the shared constructions of love: We descend, new man, new bride, agreeing/to bring only ourselves into the cave..”.—Martha McCollough, author of Wolf Hat Iron Shoes

Praise for The Red Shoes

“A feminine rhapsody, bound in satin ribbon; a proscenium of yearning—Shari Caplan’s fevered retelling of The Red Shoes dances in the mind (and heart and lungs and feet) long after the final words have pirouetted across the page, bright and unapologetic as a flame.”

- GennaRose Nethercott, author of Thistlefoot

The Red Shoes Movietelling

This performance piece allows the multi-voiced text of Shari’s chapbook to be experienced.

The film here is “The Red Shoes” by Powell & Pressburger, with art direction of this section led heavily by Hein Heckroth with assistance from painter Patricia Neville.

Poems

“Tippi Hedren” Series

“The Female Gaze” Series

“Shari Caplan Calls Upon The Spirit of Angela Carter”

“Hitchcock Asks Tippi to Star in The Birds”

“Attic/Attack Scene with Birds”

“The Moon Moth Lives for a Week After Emerging”

“How Do I Love Thee”

“Pennsylvania Wedding”

Essays & Interviews

I Can Feel This Body Dying All Around Me: Maiden, Mother, Crone Figures in The Last Unicorn

“Tragedy that Heals Amid Heartbeat Laws: Melinda Lopez’s Yerma

Sans Everything but the Essential: Shakespeare, Spacesuits, and the Power of the Human

Don’t Wish, Do It Yourself: Women Finding Their Power in Cendrillon

Summer’s Lease: Shakespeare’s Monopoly on Free Outdoor Theater

Open Reading Interview

  • "To read Shari's work is to know language re-invigorated."

    Robert Kloss, author of The Alligators of Abraham.

  • "The speaker of her poems is very much a trickster figure. This is rare for a female poet, and I say it with admiration, as a female poet."

    Cate Marvin, award-winning poet

  • "Advice from a Siren is a strong group of poems, which rewards re-reading. I'm glad it's out in the world."

    J.D. Scrimgeour, poet and professor