I'm the Man Who Loves You

"Amy King's mercurial poems capture the instability of cultural, sexual, and poetic identity. In the circuitry of her illuminated, incongruous, but somehow perfectly apt details, 'the alien befits us.' With a nod to Gertrude Stein and Fernando Pessoa, as well as cameos by Frida Kahlo, Maya Deren, and Claude Cahun, Amy celebrates 'the roles' of women even as she redefines them, telling us: 'I put on my long black dream/to live among my female brothers.' Playful, provocative, and frenetically lyrical, this is metamorphic poetry for our times—Elaine Equi. "'We are not / a great many things, while in fact we are the functions / of those things, and without them, / we are less and more than ever.' You see, there's an underbelly that needs to be got to, and I'm the Man Who Loves You is all about it. Each detail in an Amy King poem seems a world in itself. & it's not like you've never seen details like these. & it's not like you have either"—Rod Smith.