B. K. Fischer

Each night pressing east, each night drifting from surfeit, from memory of surfeit, closer to dearth.

The end of the world has come for us many times, in many ways. Whether brought about by humans, gods, or zombies, we have been telling about the end of all society since its beginning. It is lucky for us that most of those ends turn into beginnings of their own.

B.K. Fischer’s novella-in-verse Ceive is a play on the story of Noah in our time. It is not clear exactly what has killed the world, only that the protagonist must struggle with whether or not she is glad she survived to leave Sleepy Hollow and join up with a ship headed to Greenland. Alternating between poems and narrative prose tracking her journey, we are lead through all the stages of grief and the hint of rebirth. Each piece of verse can (and has in prior publication) stand on its own, but combined with the understated narrative beautifully and heartbreakingly reveals the character’s struggle, and what hope humanity may have in this new changed world.

I am no expert on poetry, but am glad whenever I find myself reading it again. It slows me down, and reminds me to really appreciate the words on the page. I am generally exhausted of the end of the world, but if I must face it again, Ceive shows how it can be done.… (mehr)

A sad but contemplative collection of poems that tells the story of the second flood and the new Ark which is a container ship owned by Nolan and Nadia and their three sons. The poems are told through the loose perspective of Val, a middle aged survivor who was brought the Ark by her UPS guy Roy. The poems follow the ship as the group of gritty survivors struggle to find a place above the waters to safely land.

More than that, I found myself as an oddly ideal audience for the previously unknown to me genre of trauma/grammar poems.… (mehr)