Amy King's first full-length collection, Antidotes for an Alibi, insists that we examine the deceptive clarity of our actions and the goals that motivate us. How does one actually get from "A" to "B"-and is there ever really a "B"? What color is the white space between "A" and "B"? Upon closer inspection, surface realities reveal themselves to be porous and fragile, layered with textures and grains that lead the eye on varying pathways. So what are we to do in a world of newspaper narratives that instruct us toward tidy endings, murmuring that such endings are possible and even inevitable?
These poems greet us with leaking giraffes, dogs that lick lye, the Lone Ranger, the inhabitants of Dishwater Island, an unmarried wife and a Sikh cab driver, all acting within a familiar environment of telephone messages, factory work, walks through woods, red robins and hummingbirds, war zones and American histories. Both the characters and their shifting frameworks combine and overlap to point out the strangeness we tend to overlook for clarity's sake. King wants us to reconsider the possibilities of current events, to see that Truth is no longer a series of fixed notations in black and white, but is a shape-shifting, multi-faceted chain of perspectives. Her poetry celebrates the multiplicities that sing within the surface of every object and action; she aims at delectable surges, so that readers may touch and revel in the uncertainties of a complex world in motion.
I admire Amy King's poetry tremendously for the way it manipulates apparently plain language into thoughtful audacities. But her work is never in love with its own spiky cleverness. Quite the opposite: it is marked, even at its most pointed or witty, by an austere refusal to giggle at its own surprises. I first came to understand King's poetry, quite appropriately, by the accident of seeing what the British call "English mosaic" on a lamppost at the northeast corner of Eighth Street and Broadway in Manhattan. "English mosaic" is what happens when someone willfully creative takes pieces of porcelain, china, earthenware ? ordinary, rare, or irreplaceable ? smashes them (that violence being essential to rebirth) and forces the pretty shards into new relations to one another. That lamppost seems the perfect tangible representation of King's work, which takes up the tactile and moral world we perceive, holds it tenderly for a moment in a cherishing embrace ? the better to dash it against a hard surface and rearrange the new fragments in strange, indelible ways. Reading King's poems makes the eyes smart in every sense of the phrase: readers are compelled to see as possible juxtapositions they never would have envisioned on their own. "English mosaic" also describes the cool fun King has with plain nickel words, artfully reshuffled. Hers is not a surrealist's art ? she does not embrace chaos ? but she does want to make readers feel that the comfortable rug and chairs they sit on have somehow grown ambulatory and are threatening to walk outside into the yard to sniff the air. Nothing is quite safe; nothing remains the same ? deliciously so.
-Michael Steinman has written and edited six books, including The Happiness of Getting It Down Right and The Element of Lavishness, which was selected as a NYT Notable Book in 2001.
Amy King grew up in Georgia and now spends much of her time in Brooklyn and Baltimore. She teaches English at Nassau Community College on Long Island, and her first collection, Antidotes for an Alibi, is available through Blazevox [books].
recurring cleaning service Mundelein ..1.Evil's CreationThou knowith evil clings To tender peace-; Nor does... Read More
I am not the one I was before yesterday.I cannot... Read More
Supernatural PoetryHere are five poems,-what I call-death and supernatural poems.... Read More
In early fall, in Minnesota, the rain falls, falls, In... Read More
I cannot bear to think of when you will be... Read More
I will never think twice nor will I roll the... Read More
Advance: in Mr. Siluk's poetry one finds symbolist values, sensuous... Read More
Fair Andes! Thy arms reach highOf iron-woven solid stone Thu... Read More
The Poet's Corner [Three poem/ see review of poetry under... Read More
All is still; all quiet; The world seems to... Read More
There I sat, ninety-five degree weatherOutside; the bookstore caf?, was... Read More
In the quiet of the arctic night- In its deep... Read More
Ocean Heal MeOcean heal my wounds Let your waves curl... Read More
Cesar Vallejo: Black RosesBow down your head ol' poet- To... Read More
"For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more... Read More
1) Shadows of the Andes [or: Song to the Andes]I... Read More
On through the darkness she searches the bones Seeking the... Read More
I wish we had met 20 years ago... A different... Read More
You cannot make someone love you. All you can do... Read More
Footprints to Mantaro Valley (English version)In what retreat art hid?-Where... Read More
I never thought I would have to say GOODBYE to... Read More
"Song of the Great Zimbabwe"Across the African, winter's skyIn the... Read More
Lord Byron's opening couplet to "She Walks In Beauty" is... Read More
Phantom of the Rocks[Huancayo, Peru]Night falls deepUpon the traveler!Low, over... Read More
Out of the eight poems provided here [all previously unpublished],... Read More
tidy up service Buffalo Grove ..Advance: in Mr. Siluk's poetry one finds symbolist values, sensuous... Read More
Shakespeare's sonnets require time and effort to appreciate. Understanding the... Read More
Asha of DarfurCry, cry-oh little Darfur woman For your sister... Read More
#25The King and Delka [Split Mawkishness-on Moiromma /Part V]Sickly SentimentalityI... Read More
Delicately, my mind was selecting a muffled tune, out of... Read More
Black Blood, in Jeremiah's Vines [A Dream Poem]And I heard... Read More
Have you ever experienced infatuation with someone you know is... Read More
Ed Gallagher Dec. 11, 1907 - Sept. 5, 2004This poem... Read More
Out of the eight poems provided here [all previously unpublished],... Read More
Like a cat I slumber, blissfully unencumbered, Through eighty per... Read More
On through the darkness she searches the bones Seeking the... Read More
(The city by the bay of Northern California, near which... Read More
How wonderfully sweet to be a dweller dwelling... Read More
Time goes by to quickly to hold your feelings inside... Read More
Have you ever read the lyrics of a Simon and... Read More
During interviews and general conversations with the public,one of the... Read More
Learn about love by reading poetry by a long dead... Read More
the disease of extremism is infectious-; whoever cannot think of... Read More
Do you ever stare at the paper, waiting for poetic... Read More
You are to me my lifeline my security. That scares... Read More
1)dying in the bar [sluggishly]yet, I would crawl too upto... Read More
I will never think twice nor will I roll the... Read More
So many looked to you for inspiration,Unlikely hero for the... Read More
Grandpa's House [The ole Real House]The house needed painting Sun-blistered... Read More
Kafka lands resurrected in Crewe deposited by a silvery alien... Read More
Poetry |