Faster, Clarion, by Kate May-Price

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Sun, shadow, mud, and wind. Faster, Clarion came limned by a particular space, New York City and time: the Spring of 2024, when the heavy bounty of life was unlocked by grief. This collection gathers to itself the slippery paradox and essential nature of living. The darkness and vulnerability in the opportunities of dry seeds and quick creatures would no longer be ignored. No one is standing by to justify the existence of clouds or to reveal the origins of wind as these are, for the poet, necessary secrets.

Courting along the edges of knowing, each poem carefully evinces a kind of play. And deliberately so, because each brings clarity to one precise moment in the poet’s world. There are no alternative questions to ask in the depths of presence. Throughout Faster, Clarion the urgent desire for necessity and oneness is repeatedly encountered when drafting from image, association, and form to pull away from and joyfully tangle with the limitations of language.

Kate’s writing process dances and sits between the unanswerable and memory. She’s honored to have been a fellow at the Constance Saltonstall Center for the Arts in New York where she devoted herself to reading and grappling with the dual nature of endings. Kate has called Brooklyn, New York home for more than 15 years, but will never set aside the bright exuberance of the sycamores, bluegills, and raspberry canes found in Virginia. Faster, Clarion is her debut chapbook.