A Man Reads Men by the Lips of Women
I Want to Make You Safe
by Amy King
Litmus Press, 2011
87 pages / $15 Buy from SPD Books
Amy King is doing God’s work. Of course, I don’t mean God in a traditional Christian way; I mean God in the way that King speaks of God in her recent book, I Want to Make You Safe:
God is the excess
of our collective minds
of our collective wing wax
of our flights past time zones.
of our collective minds
of our collective wing wax
of our flights past time zones.
King’s poetry—its meandering syntaxis, its resistance to singular meanings, its mysterious connections and lack of connections—opens up the mind to unexplored avenues of thought. I also find King doing this work through her editing, specifically on the journal, Esque, which she co-edits with Ana Božičević, in which they bring together a wide array of contemporary poets and prose experimentalists, people like Jennifer Karmin, Cara Benson, Cynthia Arrieu King, Ching-In Chen and more. The new edition alone should get her a seat in heaven. If you haven’t seen the third issue, called Revolutionesque, you should definitely check it out.
4 Comments
February 24th, 2012 / 1:00 pm
February 24th, 2012 / 1:00 pm
Adam Robinson—
How do you think the means of publication for poetry and poetry itself are related?
-Amy King, at the Huffington Post.
5
I Like Amy King A Lot
Amy King is the author of I’m the Man Who Loves You, Antidotes for an Alibi, and Slaves to Do These Things (Blazevox Books), The People Instruments (Pavement Saw Press), Kiss Me With the Mouth of Your Country (Dusie Press), and I Want to Make You Safe (forthcoming, Litmus Press).
She was kind enough to take some time to answer some question about her work in an epic interview that is, if I may say so, well worth the read.
Amy King: I’m The Man Who Loves You
I’ve been meaning to write about Amy King’s poetry for some time now and plan on a longer post at a later date. (Click here to go to her blog.) As a non-poet, I find writing about poetry intimidating and as a reader of poetry, I use very loose guidelines in my judgement of poetry. Here are my reasonings, and an Amy King poem: