The prose poem has enjoyed a resurgence over the last generation, although many writers dont know quite what to do with the form; Kim White knows what to do. Her work is mysterious yet utterly clear. She treads on slippery slopes with a sure foot. You feel a sense of danger and risk as you read these poems, but you trust your guide.
Scratching for Something
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Editorial Reviews
Review
A collection of interlocking prose poems that work both singly and as a whole with wonderful ease, combining a rich surface with a variety of undercurrents that ebb and flow, thematically and stylistically ... This is a fine and rewarding debut. -- Poet and novelist, Nicholas Christopher
From the Publisher
The Creative Writing Center at Columbia University announces the January 30th, 1998 release of the first Quarto Book: scratching for something, a collection of prose poems by Kim White. Assistance for this project was provided by the Forbes Foundation.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book to be read and re-read,
This review is from: Scratching for Something (Paperback)
Scratching for Something is a book to be read and re-read. There are sentences that I fell in love with, and others that broke my heart. The misfit and the disfigured are viewed with interest rather than pity or disdain. Scratching for Something delves into the workings of the body and the mind, eliciting fear and marvel at the same time. It also explores our place in society with beautiful, imaginative and thought-provoking prose. Even the most bizarre character is achingly human. Anyone who has ever felt like an outcast, or nurtured a hidden desire or a secret life - can empathize.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Prose poetry rich in visceral imagery,
This review is from: Scratching for Something (Paperback)
With this book Kim White has created a wonderland filled with an odd assortment of mythological underdogs. Full of rich imagery, each poem becomes a surrealistic tableaux where inhabitants undergo transformations that are as much physiological as psychological.
An example of this can be seen in one of my favorite poems, bee: "His body was a cavernous apiary. The internal organs were heaping structures of oozing combs, shuffling with bees. They milked the flowers and made honey in his blood, filling him with soft, fragrant wax. His body was an edible sweetbread. The buzzing swarm coated his head with velvety pollen and covered his face like a shifting hood." Like Charles Simic, White uses the prose poem as a form of storytelling - short narrative vignettes that loop and twist in ways that keep the reader a little off-balance. The book is made up of roughly 40 prose poems. Most are about a single page in length and although each is relatively short they deliver emotional jolts with deft economy. The poems themselves possess a seductive melancholy built upon lyrical descriptions of loneliness and reclusion; a man builds a cocoon for himself; a woman keeps hidden her hundreds of tiny legs beneath her clothes. These macabre riffs run throughout the book yet achieve surprisingly poignant results. The great thing about poetry is that it allows the reader to engage on multiple levels. For some, these poems will be hallucinatory jaunts of the imagination, while for others the anima/animus hidden in the shadows of our mundane lives will be revealed with affection and delight. Either way this collection is a joy to read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling and Beautiful,
This review is from: Scratching for Something (Paperback)
Kim White's imagination is exceptionally rich, and she manages to conjure so much -- vivid visuals, strong sensations, whole atmospheres -- in the small spaces of these prose-poems. The poems evoke conflicted physical experience -- and the relationship between the body and the soul -- in a way that I've not seen anywhere else. Each poem witnesses a body -- man, woman, or child. Many of these bodies are undergoing transformations: they are growing, or something is growing inside them. Other bodies shrink, live invisibly, or cocoon themselves. The book seems to be an opportunity to reflect on the experience of pregnancy, the sense of something foreign growing under the skin, and also the imagined experience of the enwombed baby, who is suspended between worlds, taking form but still unable to do anything. It's a real treat to live for the duration of this book inside Kim White's imagination, witness to each body's transformation -- or lifelong strangeness. Rendered in sharp, deceptively simple language, these poems are compelling and beautiful.
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