Amy Marguerite, over under fed
My love for amy marguerite’s writing has been, well, probably pretty well known but it has felt like a little bit of a secret treasure I’ve worn like a piece of jewellery next to the skin where no one can see it because of her not having yet published a book, just always extremely widely shared and admired work in quite a lot of places on the internet and in anthologies and on spinoff and yes, it is ridiculous of me to have felt as if this so widely loved poet is my secret, and yet there are some writers people feel like this about, writers like eileen myles and grace paley, who, no matter how many editions of how many books have been read by how ever many people, still feel like your own special discovery and so I don’t think publishing a book is going to change anything here, only that maybe even more people will get a chance to feel as if amy marguerite is a writer writing somehow very especially and very intimately and very exactly for them alone.
over under fed is a poetry collection awash with feeling, with memory and desire, written in the aftermath of a life-threatening eating disorder and a disorienting romance/situationship: this is an urgent, powerful, important collection that is also beautiful, scattered, tender, lyrical, funny, searching, furious, generous and brave. I love how felt everything is – in “a disappointing pinata,” “the wind / makes my leg / hairs tremor / like unlicked / candyfloss,” in “stalling,” clammy limbs “suspend disbelief / more readily than / an immortal jellyfish / drafting its seventeenth will,” and while you are wait whatting over that line, what about the sway of feeling evoked in “the flame, it takes,” “like a seesaw / or a seagull fleeing / beckoning / messing with resistance,” as “your shellac eyeballs / [smoulder ] into mine,” until “after some time it becomes.........and [after the most beautiful unspooling of ellipses on the page] we both look away.”
It is a little bit hard to describe the combination of lyric intensity and conversational casualness, that is produced, for instance, by an extension of ellipses ending – helplessly, furiously – with a question mark; or that might be given voice to with a “ha ha” here, a “gosh,” there – I love the punctuation of “gosh [full stop] your face” – it is like there is no filter, no time gap between the feeling and its written expression. These poems just spool out like the most glorious, drifting, intense, loving, afternoon-into-night-into-morning conversation, a conversation full of vivid images and beautiful, startling words. the poems so often sound-driven – as when the “theatrical treatment” prescribed in the poem “i was hungry” involves “wheat packs” and “a breathable leather sweat shirt,” a “wreathy repeatability” leading to the inevitable, only possible real solution for this heathery pinfeathery creature: “just eat.”
This is a collection full of such desperate hunger, such passionate desire; This is a poet joyriding to the new inferno, blossoming like a streetlamp in July, dropping a towel to come running, scuttering wine-dry lips across a lover’s body, someone voluntarily combustible, walking through fire tunnels to be healed, walking through fire tunnels to be held.
Order it from your bookshop or from the press.
My love for amy marguerite’s writing has been, well, probably pretty well known but it has felt like a little bit of a secret treasure I’ve worn like a piece of jewellery next to the skin where no one can see it because of her not having yet published a book, just always extremely widely shared and admired work in quite a lot of places on the internet and in anthologies and on spinoff and yes, it is ridiculous of me to have felt as if this so widely loved poet is my secret, and yet there are some writers people feel like this about, writers like eileen myles and grace paley, who, no matter how many editions of how many books have been read by how ever many people, still feel like your own special discovery and so I don’t think publishing a book is going to change anything here, only that maybe even more people will get a chance to feel as if amy marguerite is a writer writing somehow very especially and very intimately and very exactly for them alone.
over under fed is a poetry collection awash with feeling, with memory and desire, written in the aftermath of a life-threatening eating disorder and a disorienting romance/situationship: this is an urgent, powerful, important collection that is also beautiful, scattered, tender, lyrical, funny, searching, furious, generous and brave. I love how felt everything is – in “a disappointing pinata,” “the wind / makes my leg / hairs tremor / like unlicked / candyfloss,” in “stalling,” clammy limbs “suspend disbelief / more readily than / an immortal jellyfish / drafting its seventeenth will,” and while you are wait whatting over that line, what about the sway of feeling evoked in “the flame, it takes,” “like a seesaw / or a seagull fleeing / beckoning / messing with resistance,” as “your shellac eyeballs / [smoulder ] into mine,” until “after some time it becomes.........and [after the most beautiful unspooling of ellipses on the page] we both look away.”
It is a little bit hard to describe the combination of lyric intensity and conversational casualness, that is produced, for instance, by an extension of ellipses ending – helplessly, furiously – with a question mark; or that might be given voice to with a “ha ha” here, a “gosh,” there – I love the punctuation of “gosh [full stop] your face” – it is like there is no filter, no time gap between the feeling and its written expression. These poems just spool out like the most glorious, drifting, intense, loving, afternoon-into-night-into-morning conversation, a conversation full of vivid images and beautiful, startling words. the poems so often sound-driven – as when the “theatrical treatment” prescribed in the poem “i was hungry” involves “wheat packs” and “a breathable leather sweat shirt,” a “wreathy repeatability” leading to the inevitable, only possible real solution for this heathery pinfeathery creature: “just eat.”
This is a collection full of such desperate hunger, such passionate desire; This is a poet joyriding to the new inferno, blossoming like a streetlamp in July, dropping a towel to come running, scuttering wine-dry lips across a lover’s body, someone voluntarily combustible, walking through fire tunnels to be healed, walking through fire tunnels to be held.
Order it from your bookshop or from the press.
