Katerina Stoĭkova
Description
In her latest collection of poetry, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer fearlessly probes the 'porcupine of mind,' the prickly defenses of the psyche, to lay bar
...
e the experiences of love and leaving, regret and discovery, severed roots and new possibilities, all from the perspective of an intellectually voracious and passionate wanderer between two languages and cultures. There are poems here that dazzle with inventiveness, as well as poems expressing such deep emotional honesty they catch the reader's breath.
In the tradition of authors like Conrad, Nabokov and her fellow-poet Charles Simic, master stylists in their adopted English, Stoykova-Klemer explores and delights in the possibilities of the language. In some poems words themselves are the characters and we listen in on their surprising conversations. But in a larger sense the entire collection is a dialogue with language; and just as she warns us
You ll never pronounce the word love the same after you ve kissed a foreigner,
readers will come away with a new appreciation for the potential of poetry to speak the truth after they have embraced Stoykova-Klemer s verse.
"Katerina Stoykova-Klemer's new book, The Porcupine of Mind, is bristling with intelligence, humor, and fresh perceptions. She has many ways of combining the ordinary with the fabulous. She can write a love poem to a single cell organism, or turn an encounter with an annoying fly into a fable of empathy. Read this marvelous book, and you will find yourself laughing out loud. You might also find yourself looking up from these pages refreshed and enlivened by your encounter with such a charmed vision and singular voice." - Greg Pape, author of American Flamingo
"If you are a new reader of Katerina Stoykova-Klemer s poetry, you are in for a delightful experience. Those of us who have read her work know that Katerina s poems are like no one else s; they are smart and weighty in subject, but as with the best poetry, full of lively play. Opening The Porcupine of Mind is like sitting down with one of those people who provide the best possible companionship. Readers, prepare for a rollicking good conversation, full of wit, intellectual hooks, and winking flirtation." - Kathleen Driskell, author of Seed Across Snow
"With droll wit and brainy imagination Katerina Stoykova-Klemer turns a large life and a long journey into the vibrant, astonishing miniature poems in The Porcupine of Mind, the first full book of her poems in English. These rubies, which she creates from potatoes, miseries, candles, mistakes, kisses, and lost friends, shine in surreal splendor. Tempering her extreme compassion is the prickly, matter-of-fact attitude of a Bulgarian dark humorist. Although we know her from a chapbook and from translations, now it s time to savor fully Katerina Stoykova-Klemer s protean imagination: one that can hold a conversation with a single cell or observe the heave in the body of a housefly. The Porcupine of Mind announces a vital new voice in contemporary American poetry." - Molly Peacock, author of The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72
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