Antibodies in the Alphabet by Linda King

In Antibodies in the Alphabet, Linda King grapples with the physicality and the ephemerality of language. She observes that “words are shed like skin/ sentence fragments/ like broken ladder rungs// language leaves a suicide note” and that “every letter/ of every sentence has been picked clean” and ponders the ways in which we render our experiences in speech, and how speech makes us vulnerable, opening us up to scrutiny and to accountability. In this generous and adventurous collection, the poet investigates “what silence thinks of words” while “behind the scenes/ the rain translates your name/ into some other language”. A fascinating inquiry into meaning-making.

—Anatoly Molotkov, author of The Catalogue of Broken Things and Application of Shadows.

Antibodies in the Alphabet is a recounting of life as language, where the events are words, & the subtleties, the nuances of those words, are letters. These events come in the form we expect for them to present in — street signs, diary entries, video-taped confessions; visual, aural. Then, just as we accept this is how it always is, Linda King turns everything around to show there are viable options of presentation that diverge from the commonplace — ” bring something with feathers / like a new book of poems.”

Not that there haven’t been hints from the beginning. References to “a second language” & “a foreign alphabet” appear in the very first poem in the book. Gradually we come to realize through the careful instruction & delightful use of language contained in this collection that language is many things, can be made up of things we never previously thought of as components of “language.” That, in fact, language gives life as well as the obverse.

— Mark Young, author of The Codicils & Pelican Dreaming.

“antibodies in the alphabet” is a book of poems written from inside language. It’s from this perspective in which the world is also a word that Linda King creates an unnerving second world parallel to this one.

language is too odd a thing
folded and pressed into submission
deconstructed
line breaks
like limbs dangling …

King holds us to the mark, offering no easy way out. Perhaps her poems haunt us because they’re not so much about us as our relationship to the words we use to stand in for us. Her critical lyric examines its own modus operandi and although armed with impeccable word choices peppered with wry wit, she often threatens to throw it all away and let danger take the high road. This is a book acutely cognizant of language’s painful limitations and momentary exhilarations. As she says so eloquently “the unwavering of being/is the meaning we miss/every time.”

—Charles Borkhuis, author of Dead Ringer

Linda King is the author of four poetry collections, Dream Street Details ( Shoe Music Press, 2012) Reality Wayfarers (Shoe Music Press, 2014) No Dimes for the Dancing Gypsies (BlazeVOX Books, 2016) and Ongoing Repairs to Something Significant ( BlazeVOX Books, 2017) Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals in Canada and internationally. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and also for Best of the Net. King lives and writes on The Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 80 pages

· Binding: Perfect-Bound

· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] 

· ISBN: 978-1-60964-339-3

$16

Antibodies in the Alphabet … by BlazeVOX [books]