Cate Marvin’s first book, World’s Tallest Disaster, was chosen by Robert Pinksy for the 2000 Kathryn A. Morton Prize and published by Sarabande Books in 2001. In 2002, she received the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. She co-edited with poet Michael Dumanis the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (2006). Her poems have appeared in Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New England Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Fence, The Paris Review, The Cincinnati Review, Slate, Verse, Boston Review, and Ninth Letter. Her second book of poems, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, was published by Sarabande in 2007. Marvin teaches poetry writing in Lesley University’s Low-Residency MFA Program and Columbia University’s MFA Program and is Professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. In 2009, she co-founded the nonprofit organization VIDA: Women in Literary Arts with poet Erin Belieu. Her third book of poems, Oracle, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton & Co. in March 2015.
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Fragment of the Head of a QueenPoemsFrom"All My Wives"
When I say my wives are cages, I don’t mean I’m a bird.
Collapsible shelves, they hide their usefulness when not
in use. All my wives contain terrariums: terrible and fetid
atmospheres in which their salamander selves linger atop
damp rocks. Their hands are damp as the tissues they ball
in their hands, though none of my wives could make a fist,
not even if I asked, no, not even if I commanded them to,
an amusing idea I must someday revisit. My wives are like
the Small Mammal House at the zoo, their rooms kept dark
so visitors may view their nocturnal truths, that anonymous
wakefulness we sleepers do not care to know. None of my
wives are like lanterns, nor do their ribs sing with canaries...
Fragment of the Head of a Queen:Poems -
Fragment of the Head of a QueenPoemsFrom"Alibi Poem"
Burning its furniture, memorizing lighthouses, applauding the riots, looting
storefronts, reversing its baptism, losing its grammar, adoring its cell phone,
entering its gates of heaven, taste-testing toothpaste, flirting with its cavities,
taking a lungful, divining its weather, recalling its vote, shopping for oranges,
singing off-key, polishing its karma, dealing its cards, leaving the casino after
dawn, gargling Lysol, reading the Classics, charging a light bulb, eschewing
materialism, arresting its fellow citizens, avoiding the newspaper, creating its
binary, joining the opposition and—when it had a spare moment—weeping.
Fragment of the Head of a Queen:Poems -
Fragment of the Head of a QueenPoemsFrom"Fragment of the Head of a Queen"
Behold your head, a hive the bear’s pawed down
from its bough, smashes to ground for sweetness,
honey leaking a yellow jasper. Its furious center
dispelled, now all of you is leaving. This is how
the self turns on self, goes vagabond, this is how
you are repaid for your industry. Their domicile
dismantled, thoughts now roam the air like aimless
troops, seeking recompense in the sticky jewels
of an empty soda can, crawl into its lip’s sweet
keyhole, cannot make their way back out the dark.
I would have made for them a freedom song, if
the teller of this story had only a slave’s loyalty.
Fragment of the Head of a Queen:Poems
“These are poems of feeling, memory, and calamity, of a life lived near the edge and an edge that nevertheless always resolves itself into a haunting ethical music. This is a wonderful collection of poems. It makes a powerful claim on the reader at every turn, on every page.” —Eavan Boland [on Oracle]
“ . . . there is both violence and humor in the 42 lyrics of Marvin's second book. In her often amped-up sonics (‘standing neck-deep in a pit, whisky-pitched, ether-lit’), her formal skill and her penchant for anger-filled poems on the love/hate of self and beloved, Marvin . . . suggests a postmodern Plath.” —Publishers Weekly [on Fragment of the Head of a Queen]
“A keen new poetic voice . . . she fashions elegant poems that pull quietly but fiercely in opposite emotional directions . . . Wreathed in smoke and stoked with whiskey, Marvin's poetic personae are lunar in their brightness and brooding, gazing out moodily on landscapes steeped in centuries' worth of poets' tropes and heartaches . . . Marvin snaps crisp metaphors onto the page like winning hands in poker, taking no comfort in victory, however, counting instead on panache, carefully wrapped anger, and precise expression to carry her through.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist [on World’s Tallest Disaster]
Selected Works
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