Fabulae

by Joy Katz and Joy Katz MFA

In Fabulae, Joy Katz interrogates the physical world, constructing a sensual and striking autobiography. She turns to the familiarity and strangeness of the female body, its surfaces and inner workings, often, although her subjects range from Thomas Jefferson to an Adam and Eve plagued with obsessive-compulsive disorder to the streets of New York's diamond district. The poems, by turns funny and philosophical, point to how we suffer from...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080932444X
• ISBN13: 9780809324446
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Length: 72 Pages
• Weight: 0.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.2" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent, Intense Collection.

As the title suggests, stories are a central theme in this collection. Katz is especially skilled at taking a fresh approach to historical places, figures, and events. One especially memorable poem, "A Nation So Ignorant of Itself" deals with John Wesley Powell exploring the Grand Canyon, the experience itself and afterwards how terrible it must be to discuss what he has seen with others, that they can never see or understand. Other poems are incredibly location based, like "In the Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague" which focuses on a crowded cemetery where tombstones are placed on top of each other and look "like molars in a small jaw."

fabulae

Sometimes I feel bulldozed, I feel burrowed and tunnelled reading this collection. Joy Katz is a remarkable poet. She has has written a stunning book.

Blends the art of a fabulator with the art of a sculptor

The poetry of Joy Katz blends the art of a fabulator with the art of a sculptor to create a sensual and impressive autobiographical poetry in Fabulae. Her poetry ranges from the comedic to the philosophical and weaves a linguistic delight through her remarkable and memorable use of word rhythms and imagery. The Word Wife: When the silence between them/was a new thing--a morning in a garden--/he took a pencil and sketched her feed./He matched her ankles/in crisp lines falling like wisps/of hair from a boy's first cut./The quick strokes were moths/lighting her body, the background/white, like the word wife, first light/touching the violet's hair. The new word/husband, hush of a car up the street./Pigeons swallowing their tongues beneath the eaves.