Amy King's mercurial poems capture the instability of cultural, sexual, and poetic identity. In the circuitry of her illuminated, incongruous, but somehow perfectly apt details, "the alien befits us." With a nod to Gertrude Stein and Fernando Pessoa, as well as cameos by Frida Kahlo, Maya Deren, and Claude Cahun, Amy celebrates "the roles" of women even as she redefines them, telling us: "I put on my long black dream/to live among my female brothers." Playful, provocative, and frenetically lyrical, this is metamorphic poetry for our times.

—Elaine Equi

Amy King's poetry is carried by a vital and ineluctable complexity, yoking near-Elizabethan conceit to the roughest necessities with disarming sweetness. John Ashbery and Chidiock Tichborne could not have teamed up to do it better.

—Annie Finch

"We are not / a great many things, while in fact we are the functions / of those things, and without them, / we are less and more than ever." You see, there's an underbelly that needs to be got to, and I'M THE MAN WHO LOVES YOU is all about it. Each detail in an Amy King poem seems a world in itself. & it's not like you've never seen details like these. & it's not like you have either.

—Rod Smith

These poems are meditative, subtle and deeply human, but beneath their cool, often gorgeous surfaces are darker currents, "holes firing lyrics, free range." Amy King "pimps the abyss," and she's not joking. Better kiss your "trucker state" goodbye.

—Linh Dinh

 

Amy King lives in Brooklyn, NY and is the author of the poetry collection, ANTIDOTES FOR AN ALIBI  (Blazevox Books 2005), and the chapbook, THE PEOPLE INSTRUMENTS (Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award 2002).  She teaches Creative Writing and English at SUNY Nassau Community

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Also by Amy King

The Serial Detective and other notations
by Amy King
[ a free BlazeVOX ebook]

We Are All Around Us
by Amy King
[ a free BlazeVOX ebook]