Amy King's Writings
View Amy’s Books | Read Amy’s other writings below.
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Column
Oct.16.2012
PEN AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
Epigraph to The Color Purple
September is all about banned books here at PEN American. We reached out to writers, editors, literary illuminati, and PEN staff to write about the banned books that matter to them most. Today’s piece comes from poet Amy King, author, most recently, of I Want to Make You Safe.
The ban on this book reminds me of the...
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Essay
Oct.16.2012
WALT WHITMAN JOURNAL ON POETICS
I cannot fathom that Walt Whitman was the first to write on a variety of controversies typically attributed to “Song of Myself,” including the complexities of slavery, the overt hand of eroticism, and the soul beyond the confines of religion, atrocities of war, etc. In fact, a number of writers come easily to mind who preceded him on such matters (i....
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Poem
Dec.07.2008
First Published in Coconut Poetry
Never Is Less
Than the emptiness I once made of it, your confusion
crosses the sands of time, a cracked hourglass of regular rain,
where you were shaped exactly the way I remember admiring.
But still, we panted at more than we ever could handle, broke
formation and asked to be wed in the Grand Canyon,
with dynamite for a...
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Poem
Dec.07.2008
First Published in Poetry X
As If A Lantern In Love Led
Like you I haveforgotten everythingspoken so far,I knew the dinosaursin their historyand I have a complex tiethat longs to be subtracted.All together, we make each otherup. I gave youa little slice of heartacheto latch onto& a sixty-pound cumulous cloudcools her...
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Poem
Dec.07.2008
First Published in Poetry X
I Too Am Chicken
An author thinks she knows more thanshe does. She knows even less.For example, someone else wrote this.Thoughts approach in the shower;she watches them haunt her swirling tides.That’s the cliché declarative.She thinks,Whenever I exist, people name me at the gate;I trip over my...
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Short Story
Dec.07.2008
First Published in Poetry X
My Head On Fire, Dull But Glowing I
A miniature salamander rearshis tiny head in the hallsof discordia praying a mantrato stand for the supple flaghe hopes reveals our segues
And really, I am only talkingto myself in the hidden cornerof this café because no one elsecan hear what I’ve just...
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Poem
Dec.07.2008
First Published in MiPOesias
Autobiographical Encounter
The fact that I am writing in the background
of day should offer a notch of cool comfort
about or without me, my graveyard on ice. I tend
to camouflage acrobatics of finely-grained stutters
by sitting perfectly motionless. Passers by speculate
in rounds on my rowboated entrance:...
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Poem
Dec.07.2008
First Published in Fieralingue
The Living Still Have Their Names
1.
People who have seen
me think that something’s up.
They look deep through my leaves
at the roots I have gathered
into knots and piecemeal lassos.
From this Union Square Park,
I peek between fingers at Tuscany,
a spring...
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Poem
Dec.07.2008
First Published in Big Bridge
MILDLY FREE
A film of love can be shot in any direction, I know a guy with a gondola blotting the sky; his other helicopter cries about an outbreak of renewed influenza that has hit this bald eagle town under average war-like pretense, we pull our daisies, chainsaw the living spaces, swallow small medicines, and select...
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Poem
Dec.07.2008
First Published in Womb Poetry
THE MYSTERIOUS WISTERIA GROWS BESIDE A SEATED STONE
I was born at a very early age. Later, I came to resemble my misconceptions and grew into the egg I had been commissioned to avoid and exist in. In this way, we are issued. My freckled shell now sings etudes in memory of Chopin. Events have...
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"Amy King is a true bard." — Tomaž Šalamun”
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About Amy
I Want to Make You Safe has just been released by Litmus Press, 2011. Amy King is also the author of Slaves to do These Things, I’m the Man Who Loves You and Antidotes for an Alibi, all from Blazevox Books, as well as The People Instruments (Pavement Saw...
Connections
Causes Amy King Supports
PETA