Between the declarative first gesture of its title, and the final line of its final poem, Amy King’s second book
I’m the Man Who Loves You is a-swirl in a tornado of mixing (but not mixed) messages. The book’s 60(!) poems, which are arranged alphabetically by title and with no section breaks, operate like transcriptions of satellite signals criss-crossing in the Vast. At their best, they’re compositions of bright ideas, music, and noise, resulting in (among other things) the deployment of form and content against one another to create tension, poetic texture, and (paraphrasing Apollinaire) the flare-up of multiple meanings in the flames of joy.
As a result, I’m the Man Who Loves You not only has guts and attitude, but achieves altitude (meta-tude) in its refusal to say the simple thing simply—which is (tracking from the title to the final poem), “I’m the man who loves you—Yes, you.” Thus, one might argue that “I love you” is the book’s fundamental operating system and thesis. And yet, of course, as with actual love, it’s complicated, but (also, as is often the case with/in actual love) it’s these complications that make it interesting, risky, and marvelous (that is, both love and the book itself) ...
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COLDFRONT MAG by Matt Hart.
