A Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees: Poems

A
Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees is a collection of poems made of natural
imagery, queer metaphors, personal observations, and historical circumstances
surrounding honeybees. In the aftermath of a fictional bee extinction, these
poems are presented to the post-bee reader as “artifacts.”

Playing
with Bees positions
poetry in hindsight to contemplate poetry’s “natural” inclinations toward
building alternative worlds through earthbound metaphors. Whether a single line or an entire premise, none of the poems could think, speak, or see in the same way
if bees–and the relations they make possible–suddenly disappeared. Like any
natural resource, the bee is a wellspring of possibility. Essential. Fragile.
Causal. And like any animal, the pollinating bee has enabled a diverse phylum
of phrases and myths that humans trade to express our most hard-to-name
feelings.

What
in our imagination changes after a peg in the environment is removed? What
could disappear from our minds, our fantasies, and our self-descriptors, if
nature is no longer a mirror?

Consider a museum of language. As artifacts, these poems are
the residue of a dead species–but they are also the offshoots of a playful,
abundant, delicate ecosystem. Playing with Bees covets what’s left. At
the bottom of everything, we find the fragments of an ecologically intact dream:
an apocalypse in reverse.

Author: Rk Fauth
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Published: 01/16/2024
Series: Walt McDonald First-Book Poetry
Weight: 0.6lbs
Size: 9.06h x 5.91w x 0.79d
ISBN: 9781682831960
Language: English