requited by kristina marie darling book preview
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"Where would I travel if you hadn't stopped me on the bridge to a brighter city," asks the narrator of Requited, Kristina Marie Darling's brilliant new essay-in-fragments. These spare, elegant prose poems describe a love affair salted like the "marble façade" of its frozen freeways. Lush flowers brittle into "iced-over fields of dead poppies" where "plaster doves have cracked from the cold." Each poem poses a question meant to haunt the reader, much as Darling's mysterious narrator is haunted by miscommunication: "There are always so many things that can go wrong in a conversation." This gorgeous collection evokes passionate emotion through precise imagery and startling detail: "You are the display of lights. / & now cold water, / its bitter taste."—Carol Guess, author of Tinderbox Lawn and Doll Studies: Forensics“Why,” Kristina Marie Darling asks, or, more exactly, doesn’t ask but states in the form of questions in her star dusted book of meteorites, “Why can so many things be mistaken for metaphors.” Metaphors, meteorites, these are the last telegrams of nano “narrative.” Distilled fragments, de-can’t-ed, that are then fermented again in the redacted and deduced subliminal “Epilogue. These are subatomic automatons, little engines that should. They are like, well, liking. They are like nothing else. And I like liking all this liking. —Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and Four for a QuarterKristina Marie Darling’s latest collection, Requited, follows a relationship through its frozen expanse, to the very edge of its thresholds, and beyond. Along the way, images offer themselves up as luminous signs: an injured deer, marble, a winter garden. Words recur and reconfigure themselves in a bright, shifting constellation. Darling’s brief, haunting poems mesmerize with their cold and captivating light.—Eleanor Stanford, author of The Book of SleepThe prose poems that open Kristina Marie Darling’s Requited gradually recede, through erasure, into the quieter fragments of the “Epilogue.” The closing section deftly reframes the juxtapositions and silences that come before, making one question whether the collection’s title suggests love or retaliation.—Sandra Lim, author of Loveliest GrotesqueIn Requited, Darling mines the last moments of a dying relationship for something more than its cold remains: she distills her own narrative down to its fiery parts, its sparks, so that next to a field of “dead poppies,” “Girls / still cling to bouquets,” and the lining of a winter coat holds an “imperceptible glow.” In a series of resonant erasures and reconfigurations, Darling transforms a sad love story into fragments of song from the weirdly elegant universe.—Laura Sims, author of StrangerRequited must be savored—word by word and line by line—to fully take in the uncanny lushness of the relationship at the center of Kristina Darling’s poetry. There is a beautiful spiraling away in these echoes—where “the meadow’s dark flowers bursting into bloom” surges with a reverberating aloneness just as “in the distance, the strip malls have begun to glow.” This is a wondrous collection. —Alex Lemon, author of The Wish Book, Fancy Beasts and Happy: A Memoir Kristina Marie Darling is the author of thirteen books, which include Melancholia (An Essay) (Ravenna Press, 2012), Petrarchan (BlazeVOX Books, 2013), and (with Carol Guess) X Marks the Dress: A Registry (Gold Wake Press, 2013). Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, as well as grants from the Kittredge Fund and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She is currently working toward a Ph.D. in Poetics at S.U.N.Y.-Buffalo.Book Information:· Paperback: 46 pages · Binding: Perfect-Bound · Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] · ISBN: 978-1-60964-177-1$12 Pre-Orders WelcomeTRANSCRIPT
REQUITED
KRISTINA MARIE DARLING
B L A Z E V O X [ B O O K S ] Buffalo, New York
Requited by Kristina Marie Darling Copyright © 2014 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza Cover Art by Carly Trosclair First Edition ISBN: 978-1-60964-177-1 Library of Congress Control Number: incoming BlazeVOX [books] 131 Euclid Ave Kenmore, NY 14217 [email protected]
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REQUITED
"The sky we bear on our shoulders, heaven-height and livid firmament, delineated dream sounding distance, when distant spaces seem silence, absence, unconsummated sight..." —Karen Volkman, Nomina
THE STORY
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* We walk to a rose garden in the dead of winter. You're sorry for "needing time." There are always so many things that can go wrong in a conversation. Above us, fallen branches cover the fountains. A car pulls off the road. You ask for directions, but the driver has already turned away.
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* Around us, dead ivy sprawls from a display of marble cherubs. You kick some leaves with the steel toe of your boot. How did we get lost when the garden seemed so small. On every statue, plaster doves have cracked from the cold. Their colorless eyes ask why we're still here.
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* The way out of the garden is simple. I let go of your hand and climb over a chain link fence. Traffic rushing on the other side of a steel partition. What does it mean to cross a threshold. Near the road, an injured deer has been left to die. Its dark brown eyes seem to wonder why we've left the roses behind.
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* Now we're driving to your sister's house. You apologize for the flowers, their iced-over stems. I watch your breath turn to frost as it touches the window. If I left for another unremarkable city, would the air between us begin to thaw. You gesture at the freeway, its marble façade covered in salt.
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* Tonight you tell me about girls from Midwestern cities. The subtle difference between Ann Arbor and Bloomington. I wrap your scarf around my neck. When did conversations become difficult. In the distance, strip malls have begun to glow. At the end of your story is another small town.
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* Browsing shop windows we're never alone. Your friend buys discounted chocolate as clerks dismantle holiday wreaths. Where would we go if you were willing to follow me. Around us, strangers admire the display of lights. A pill dropped in cold water loses some of its bitter taste.