For Karen Garthe, poetry is a Molotov cocktail. A master of radical invention, Garthe combines brio of conception with linguistic virtuosity, bringing language to new life from the inside at breakneck speed. The Banjo Clock, her second collection, cultivates a luxuriant sensibility even as it interrupts poetic continuity with cuts, ironies, sharp wit, and wild recklessness. In poems that consider poetry itself, Garthe writes about preparing the medium, the ink, “the motion of new utility.” She then turns to America’s psychic maladies and the need to rehabilitate our democracy, now floundering in the glare of TV’s blue depressive light.

Fanta grape
Rid the kitchen
Ikebana
Gorge
Ink Runs
REHAB (we want grace walls)
National sky
Buckle up, Sweetie
Piranesi under The Keystone of A
Eternal Youth
PARTITA Flat-out Mars
To Dolls Big as Clara
Bear
Dolly Loves the Ocean
Little Soulyard, 1
Island of the Judge who kept us
State Fair
First surge Cable
my Liebestod
Frail of a year
Midwest
soldiering PARTITA
Little Soulyard, 2
Sadly, I noticed
Andrew, all bespoke
The Porticos of Toulouse
Porn Guy Idée Fixe
Champagne Blondes/Little Scrap of Irony
The Challenge
59th Street Station
Sweet Thing Theology
To the Cinematographer
High Nouns Shepherd
Speak Revenue
mantra
Solace Ritual
The Dark Dauphine
A Letter from Home To Karen Dalton
Call Sleeping
The Chiffon Artist
Beauty
Mandarin Character, YELLO CROWN
Water Quip
Poem on Velvet & Fire’s Extra Fun
djinns in orbit
14 lines
2 hands writing
Blue Hour
Great Expectations
Great North Primitive Story
Bread Alone
Poem on Velvet, Carnegie Hall
Floating Island
Red Sleep
WIDOW on a train
Outside’s
Baby Krishna crawls to bliss
The Banjo Clock

Acknowledgments
Notes

Karen Garthe is the author of Frayed escort, which won the 2005 Colorado Prize.