I caught the first copy of My Ariel as it slid off the glue machine a few weeks back. My son caught the second (see video below!). The book is alive and kicking–pub date is officially September 18th, which happens by chance to be my mother’s birthday. This is more relevant than I thought it would be when I began my project of engaging with Plath’s Ariel. Initially the poems were quite close to Plath’s–re-visions, ghostings, confrontations, and responses—but that changed over time. There are a lot of the earlier ones in the book still, but certainly not all of them. Thanks to Coach House and Ingrid Paulson for an amazing design. There is also a hardcover edition but I haven’t seen that yet.

Here are a few earlier versions. With thanks to all the editors!

“Tulips,” Concrete & River

“The Jailor,” The Walrus

“Death & Co,” The Awl

“I am no Lady, Lazarus,” Rusty Toque

“Little Fugue,” The Awl

“Thalidomide,” “The Rabbit Catcher,” The Malahat Review

“Couriers,” “Cut,” Poetry

It’s alive!

A post shared by Lemon hound (@lemon_hound) on Aug 16, 2017 at 1:17pm PDT

MxT, or “Memory x Time,” is one of the formulas acclaimed poet Sina Queyras posits as a way to measure grief. These poems mourn the dead by turning memories over and over in their hands, by invoking other poets, by appropriating science, by studying the history of elegy. Devastating, cheeky, allusive, hallucinatory: this is Queyras at her most powerful.

“Sina Queyras is a poet to read and reckon with.”—Lambda Literary Review

All the gods know is destinations. I have raised
A glass, my eye, your hook. Let’s face it the world
Is a shrinking place and hungry: too much grief
To feed. I float away from you on hard

Covers. I step out on the stacked hours. Words
If they were soil how I would throw them back into the
Compost pile and wait for spring. Those “this is how
It is,” speeches appear and later diamonds soft as bullets.

I went to the library looking to scaffold my thoughts.
Sure, now you say Lucretius. Intelligence is so often
Hindsight. Outside Holly Golightly’s townhouse
There are taxis. The end of me, or you, is of no concern.

Frederick Seidel anoints me with the head of his penis.
It is soft as a chamois and spreads like egg across my scalp.

If you want a review copy please contact Evan Munday at Coach House Books. Launch dates to come. I will be in Toronto and Vancouver for February and March.