Karyna McGlynn

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Books

Poems

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Bio

Karyna McGlynn is the author of I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl ( Sarabande Books, 2009) and several chapbooks including the forthcoming collaboration with Adam Theriault, Small Shrines (Cinematheque Press, 2011). Her poems have appeared in Fence, Salt Hill, Columbia Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Octopus and Forklift, Ohio.

Karyna received her MFA from the University of Michigan, served as the Claridge Writer-in-Residence at Illinois College, and is currently a Teaching Fellow at the University of Houston where she is pursuing her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. She serves as poetry editor for Gulf Coast and linelinelineline . She is at work on a book inspired by Max Ernst.

McGlynn Web Vita F11.pdf

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Books

1994

Small Shrines

Alabama Steve

Scorpionica

1994

I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl
Winner of the 2008 Kathryn A. Morton Prize from Sarabande Books, selected by Lynn EmanuelRead reviews of I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a GIrlAvailable through Sarabande Books or Amazon"In an era of too much noisy straining after novelty, it's flat out enchanting to encounter an authentically original voice. Karyna McGlynn is the real thing, sui generis. And her poems proceed from an apparently inexhaustible fund of imagination: savvy and serious, straight-arrow and subversive, calibrated to the finest, freshest, idiomatic pitch. When I read McGlynn, I'm convinced I'm hearing news from the future of poetry."-Linda Gregerson"I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl is a remarkable book. It is innovative, original, unprecedented, and, at the same time, its originality and innovation are predicated on a passionate, even obsessive relationship with the past. . . . To be a reader of I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl is to be a time traveler. Yet, no matter which life, body, or landscape one lands in, all exist on a shared bedrock of violence and suffering, albeit one presided over by a glittering imagination."-From the Foreword by Lynn Emanuel"Like the multi-faced, clairvoyant speaker of I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl, who is both breathing and buried, so McGlynn's poetic eyes are split: one serves as photographer, while the other acts as profiler. For her, every innocuous object has an ominous counterpoint: the bed as operating table; a farmhouse for eggs as killing site; panties as childhood emblem and crime-scene evidence. But, while her book documents various defacements and violations, ultimately the work highlights volition and reconstruction. McGlynn's poems exhibit such spark and voracity they feel channeled instead of penned; and though they may knock us slant into the pitch, they are lit with luminol, liberating what is hidden, and in the process, illuminating and transforming us."-Simone Muench

Small Shrines

Small Shrines
a collaboration with Adam Theriault forthcoming in 2011.Currently available for pre-order over at Cinematheque Press.& here are some excerpts:"Giovanni Ribisi" _ Forklift, OH"Fiona Apple" +3 _ SIR!If that's not enough to tempt you, the New York Times ArtsBeat referred to two of the poems as "head-scratchers...frantic and awkward poems dedicated to the glories of the actors Alfred Molina and Jake Gyllenhaal. " Are you not wooed?

Alabama Steve

Alabama Steve
originally published by Destructible Heart Press (currently on hiatus) in 2008, Steve is now only available by contacting me directly.Watch Christian Peet's Woodshed review of Steve See what people on Goodreads have to say about Alabama SteveRead Rebecca Ellis' review of Steve in RATTLE.

Scorpionica

Scorpionica
My first chapbook published by New Michigan Press in 2007. Available here."These are dark and playful, sometimes brutal, confessional poems. Here you will find: death by tetherball rope, termite-infested houses, potato salad, police tape, drugged wool, prehistoric birds, unheated waterbeds, stolen margarita lip-gloss, and the body of a missing teen found in the family shed, among much more." -Ander Monson, New Michigan Press

Poems

Poems on the Interwebs
"Of all the Dead People I Know" _ The Rumpus"I Was Using Your Mail Order Drugs" _ Verse Daily"Real Art" _ Anti-"& the Southern Cross Slid Below the Belt" + 2 more _ La Petite Zine"Would You Like Me to Walk Your Baby?" + 2 more _ TYPO"Fiona Apple" + 3 more _ SIR!"Don't Move Here" + 3 more _ POOL"I Want to Introduce Myself, Not Quite Human" +2 more _ Diode"Bluff" _ Memorious"I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl" + 2 more _ Octopus"The 9-Day Queen Gets Lost on Her Way to the Execution Block" + 2 more _ Coconut"Cillian Murphy" + 2 more _ Jet Fuel Review"Erin with the Feathered Hair" _ 42opus"I Show Up Twelve Years Late for Curfew" _ Verse Daily"Before Anything Happened the House Had No Skeleton" _ Verse Daily

Reviews

Reviews
"Many of McGlynn's poems are delicious to read, suggesting and selective. . . . From its insouciant title to its final words, this debut marks Karyna McGlynn as a poet to watch." To read the full review, click here.-John Jacob, Rain Taxi Review of Books"This book of poetry is all about fiction writers' tools: plot, character, setting, and tone. . . . . I think McGlynn's mastery of storytelling makes it what so many poetry collections are not: a compelling, cant-put-it-down read." To read the full review, click here.-Jeannine Hall Gailey, The Rumpus"The title of Karyna McGlynn's second book of poems sets the reader up for the criminal impulses and the trips to the recent past that permeate the book. McGlynn's poems are scenes of violence and crime, each presented through a different perspective or voice. Although not generally graphic, they capture the kind of fear a teenager might feel when sneaking out of the house has spiraled into something much more dangerous." To read the full review click here.-The Academy of American Poets"The epithet "eagerly anticipated" where poetry is concerned is often assigned but almost never true. With Karyna McGlynns major-press debut I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl, it was, at least in my case. McGlynn's 2008 chapbook Alabama Steve was the only collection by a poet of my generation that I genuinely could not put down (if youre having trouble imagining how that could possibly be the case with poetry, read it for yourself)." To read the full review, click here.-Chris O. Cook's Poetry Blog"This book in no way feels unplanned or messy, but carefully misleading and deliberately evasive, the better to intrigue and entrance. In the penultimate poem, "I Invented the Paleolithic Circumstances Beneath This," the speaker tells us I leave myself a note pinned to the sheet You did this. / I did, I invented the ash jibs of this room I cannot leave. We know how she feels. This book entraps us, and we thank it for the pleasure." To read the full review, click here.-Valerie Wetlaufer, Poets' Quarterly "McGlynn is an excellent wielder of language, in terms of evoking multiple connotations, eliciting tones, and offering startlingly provocative imagery." To read the full review, click here.-Juliet Cook, Gently Read Literature "I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl is a jarring read, no doubt, but soon enough, as the reader works his or her way through the book, the poems come to make their own sort of marvelous sense." To read the full review, click here.-Corinna McClanahan Schroeder, The Country Dog Review"Karyna McGlynn's first full volume of poetry, I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl, surveys a violence-tinged realm of shifting selves. Though it is tempting to say that violence forms the heart of this book, the heart is actually the empty, unflinching eye of a storm which uproots time and self entirely. The speaker of these poems slips the reader shards of otherworldly forensic evidence from a crime (or crimes) which simultaneously have not yet happened and have already happened. Snapshots document unrelenting scenes of suffering, as in 'God, I Got Down There to Get Off': 'In this compromising position, prone, missionary, firearm / my lower lip fat with guilt, I think grief delights / in catching me at all the wrong angles though I know / it stares without judgment, with an animal's open fixity.' McGlynn presents fragmented images in a variety of poetic forms, ranging from standard left-aligned free verse to disjointed, oddly satisfying columns. While obsessed with past-killing, the speaker of these poems wishes to destroy her history; she also strongly identifies with it, and cannot entirely escape it. McGlynn's vacillation between past, present, and future is marked and marred by the darker side of sexuality. Far from being a series of victim narratives, the poems approach instances of trauma with a voice both detached and searing. In 1994, not only does sexual violation insidiously affect all sex, but it is inextricably bound up with the murder in the title, for 'death and sex tickle the same damn spot.'"-Jen Coleman, The Hollins Critic "Part film noir, part horror flick, these innovative poems dwell in the cul-de-sac badlands where crimes and heinous misdeeds are recurring. McGlynn, a performance poet and author of three chapbooks, offers poems in alternating views while tangling reality, time, and space. The book's motif is not connected to one central offense, yet each poem spins into the next to create a unified, albeit disturbing, whole. As in a horror film, there is danger skulking in every corner, in every seemingly benign doorway. McGlynn's poems are often hypnagogic, balancing half in the world, half in sleep. Along with masterly line and stanza breaks and the use of white space, McGlynn uses nuances that include poems written crosswise on the page. One poem reads, I cannot see / the sickness, the three seconds that will snap her / down like a switch, there / her vision cracks like I'll always be / the thing nascent, esophageal / caught mid-gargle in the black. VERDICT Recommended for contemporary poetry collections."-Karla Huston, Library Journal "This is not easy stuff. Sure, it's just a chapbook. Sure, it's entertaining. On the surfaceand sometimes under the surface it's light and funny with dazzling bright edges and breathtaking leaps. The writing is surprisingly dense, layered with history and mystery that at times require you to dig deep in order to experience the full effect of what's going on. Youre going to have to work hard to get at the writing and much of the wit in this chapbook. But you're going to have a really really good time doing it." To read the full review, please click here.-Rebecca Ellis, RATTLE "If your powers of imagination are up to the task, then you have some idea of what Karyna McGlynn's verse is like. It's like an electric twilight spinning cotton candy filaments around itself." To read the full review, please click here.-Randall Radic, Basil and Spice Watch The Home Video Review of I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Killl a Girl Watch Christian Peet's Woodshed Review of Alabama Steve

Events

Events
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 7 p.m.Lord Weary's Reading Series_ 500 W. 34th Street, Austin, TX It's a house reading, so please RSVP. I'll be reading with Patrick Frank.http://lordwearysreadingseries.tumblr.com/THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 8:30 p.m.Poison Pen Reading Series _ Poison Girl Bar1641 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TXI'll be reading with zee other Gulf Coast editors. http://www.poisonpenreadingseries.com/APRIL 29-MARCH 2I'll be at AWP in Chicago. Come give me a shoutat the Gulf Coast table! Better yet, invite me to your offsite reading. Do it.APRIL 6-8I'll be featuring at the Tucson Poetry Festivalwith awesome people, like Ander Monson and Patricia Smith. Details TBA.http://www.tucsonpoetryfestival.org/ THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12Reading at Emory UniversityAtlanta, GA. Details TBA.

Etc.

&c.
My Top 5 Quick & Dirty Submission Tips!over _ the Gulf Coast Bloghttp://www.gulfcoastmag.org/blog/archives/51-My-Top-5-Quick-Dirty-Submission-Tricks.htmlJournals I edit:Gulf CoastlinelinelinelineSome interviews w/ me:_ Shark Forum w/ Simone Muench_ Houston Chron Blog w/ Mike Emery_ the Poetry Foundation w/ Ragan Fox and Jeremy Richards_ Porter Square Books"Whoa!Totally...: Daily Acts of Contrition from a Chronic Contrarian"My old blog that I may one day revivehttp://whoatotally.blogspot.com/

Contact

karyna.mcglynn_gmail.com

follow me on twitter _karynamcglynn