ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Andrea Blythe bides her time waiting for the apocalypse by writing speculative poetry and fiction. She is the author of Your Molten Heart / A Seed to Hatch (2018) a collection of erasure poems, and coauthor of Every Girl Becomes the Wolf (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a collaborative chapbook written with Laura Madeline Wiseman. She is c-ohost of the New Books in Poetry podcast, serves as an associate editor for Zoetic Press, and is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association.
Also by Andrea Blythe:
Your Molten Heart / A Seed to Hatch
Every Girl Becomes the Wolf
Carrie White: Our Lady of Blood
Belatedly, The Refusal
The jackal leaned close
and winked, my skin
shrieking. We both
maintained
a convenient fiction.
He knew
I was an idea,
subject of his thought
— just an overload
in the switchboard.
I was the definition
of a face, never
actually
the face.
Can you throttle
laughter? Can you
go beyond
hands or arms?
The jackal had
a bullet
in his mental gun.
He shot wide, exploded
the sun. Can you
get drawn under
the cheap stench
of day?
I heard
the moment as it fell —
time like velvety graywater
or purple tonic.
I wouldn’t be
the assassin,
the woman
waved aside.
I began without him. Fear
wildly close
as soon as I was
gone.
No one
to understand
the mysterious account
of me
but me.
Source: King, Stephen, The Plant, Philtrum Press, p. 52
"Belatedly, The Refusal" is part of a series that began as part of The Poeming, a challenge launched in 2017 in which over 50 poets were assigned one of Stephen King’s books and tasked with writing 31 found poems pulled from its pages. I was assigned The Plant, which I’ve continued working with since then. My process involves printing out the page and then skimming it, using a colored pen to underline, connect, circle, and scratch out words. The page looks more and more chaotic as I work, incomprehensible to anyone else — and sometimes not even myself. The full shape of the poem emerges when I translate it from the scribbled over page into a document, still fragmented and full of holes. I love the surprise of that moment, followed by the hunt for words needed to fill in the gaps. I love how found poetry allows me to explore a text and see what alternative stories it can tell.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
