Librería Samer Atenea
Librería Aciertas (Toledo)
Kálamo Books
Librería Perelló (Valencia)
Librería Elías (Asturias)
Donde los libros
Librería Kolima (Madrid)
Librería Proteo (Málaga)
The Bringers of Fruit: An Oratorio is a polyvocalic retelling of the Persephone myth that investigates memory, code, and relationships.Elizabeth Switaj’s Bringers of Fruit continues Switaj’s long standing engagement with myth, seen in her previous books, A Broken Sanctuary and Magdalene & the Mermaids. With the repeating refrain 'I almost got away with it,' readers wait expectantly for a confrontation that doesn’t come, but instead morphs into alternate narratives. Unlike other poets’ engagements with lyrical tropes, Switaj does not use mythology as a form of coerced conventionality that is often seen; she’s got code. These myths, updated for the modern world, have MP3s, Ray-bans, html coding, 'join my band,' as well as scientific language and imagery: we encounter 'prions,' 'origami cells,' 'nucleotides,' 'monomers,' and 'cyanosis.' These poems show an examined emotionality fused with the abstract as survival technique - 'cerebral snow.' - Carrie HunterCorpselords and chthonic gods congregate in Elizabeth Switaj’s underworldly 'grumble of lights.' Myth and form alike shiver, shrivel, and arrive in the space 'where moon/ snails suck the marrow from bones/ they’ve pierced.' These necrocantos sing the fugue songs of the dead that won’t die. May we all have a psychopomp as deft of ear and image as Switaj to lead us through this encoded hell. - Candice Wuehle
