"the world unzipping"
deciduous qween by Matty Layne Glasgow is 6 x 9 x 0.4 inches & 91 pages long.
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Quite like me, Matty Layne Glasgow’s poetry collection deciduous qween is highly alive to the natural world.
Glasgow is particularly tuned in to how creatures all molt, shed, change, gender-flip, romance, shimmer, and mature. For a few examples, across three different creatures and three different poems:
Reading deciduous qween reminded me of this Carl Jung passage—now, before you lose your mind, this Carl Jung passage was an epigraph in Roz Chast’s book about dreaming. Of course I haven’t read Jung, though I always might! Anyway, he wrote: “For me, dreams are a part of Nature, which harbors no intention to deceive, but expresses something the best it can.”
The nature that seems to intrigue Glasgow is nature at its most trying and expressive. It put on all sorts of costumes and produces gleaming, strange remnants in its efforts. If it looks deceptive, it’s only because you haven’t paid enough attention, haven’t considered its motivations. This deciduous qween line I really liked—about getting a daring glimpse behind the scenes of it all—encapsulates this entire good premise: “It’s the world unzipping”
And very good news! Matty Layne Glasgow recommends a favorite Purse Book!:
I’d love to recommend Lindsey Webb’s House (Ghost Proposal, 2020). At 4 7/8” by 4 7/8” and 36 pages, it’s a perfect square of alluring, lyric poetry—each page with a short vignette building itself into a book-length poem and meditation on language itself. It even invokes a purse on its opening page! You can take this little house and its big spirit with you anywhere.
A perfect square!! That’s a very good Purse Book category.