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].
cleaning help near Mundelein ..What can I do to keep this world in its... Read More
Footprints to Mantaro Valley (English version)In what retreat art hid?-Where... Read More
She raised me like I was her own daughter from... Read More
Truth is stranger than fiction according to many people who... Read More
Have you ever thought about how nice it would be... Read More
When your life becomes unbearable And the light of... Read More
Memoirs of a Wasteland's RimIt still was light when she... Read More
JOINEDHeart beat of man pounding - yet unheard joined... Read More
My life has changedin so so many waysIt seems to... Read More
When I hear your voice inside my head it makes... Read More
YOU MIGHT THINK I AM STRONGI THINK YOU GOT IT... Read More
LIFE IS A FANTASY!A pink-eyed rabbit, fuzzy whiteHops in bedrooms... Read More
I am among those who know that one never recovers... Read More
Two Poems and an Analysis ['Witness,' & 'An Old Love']WitnessMy... Read More
I will never think twice nor will I roll the... Read More
A poetic comment that just welled up inside my head... Read More
The concept of brief encounters, even romantic encounters, with a... Read More
I want to get closeI am afraid.Afraid of what... Read More
1)dying in the bar [sluggishly]yet, I would crawl too upto... Read More
You can do and you can be whatever you want.... Read More
Daybreak at Pikes Creek [Summer of 2005]Daybreak by Lake Superior... Read More
#25The King and Delka [Split Mawkishness-on Moiromma /Part V]Sickly SentimentalityI... Read More
Do not be afraid to shine. This world needs what... Read More
Is poetry too complicated for the average reader? Is it... Read More
Take some time to stop and look at nature. Pick... Read More
reliable maid service Wilmette ..Note: written after seeing the little adobe 16th century church... Read More
She probably can't remember and I know I can never... Read More
I never met a man, who could shake my hand,... Read More
The following two poems, one in English, the other in... Read More
JOINEDHeart beat of man pounding - yet unheard joined... Read More
As I picked up some of the polished gemstones in... Read More
Kafka lands resurrected in Crewe deposited by a silvery alien... Read More
So Many Einstein'sThe morning mist, insists there is a God.... Read More
Learn about love by reading poetry by a long dead... Read More
I never thought I would have to say GOODBYE to... Read More
Sometimes we feel hard-pressed, Our backs against the wall;... Read More
Happy, Sad, Mad and Glad, Moved in down the streetCautious... Read More
LIFE IS A FANTASY!A pink-eyed rabbit, fuzzy whiteHops in bedrooms... Read More
What Hides behind the Minute?What hides behind the minute? It... Read More
The Epic Poem:A Death in Cajamarca, Peru [Atahualpa, in Cajamarca]Advance:... Read More
Amy King's first full-length collection, Antidotes for an Alibi, insists... Read More
Iquitos & the Amazon Part OneIt was December 2, l959,... Read More
(The city by the bay of Northern California, near which... Read More
It was not me as I am now. It was... Read More
"How Do I Love Thee?" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning was... Read More
AFRICA (to africans in diaspora)africa here i come, africa africa... Read More
"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling."--Oscar WildePeople write poetry... Read More
Part OneI tell you a legend of long ago Of... Read More
Robert Burns, a poor man, an educated man, and a... Read More
I get up in the morningAnd want to stay in... Read More
Poetry |