A Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees: Poems

By RK Fauth

A
Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees is a collection of poems made of natural
imagery, queer metaphors, personal observations, and historical circumstances
surrounding honeybees. In the aftermath of a fictional bee extinction, these
poems are presented to the post-bee reader as "artifacts."Playing
with Bees positions
poetry in hindsight to contemplate poetry's "natural" inclinations toward
building alternative worlds through earthbound metaphors. Whether a single line or an entire premise, none of the poems could think, speak, or see in the same way
if bees--and the relations they make possible--suddenly disappeared. Like any
natural resource, the bee is a wellspring of possibility. Essential. Fragile.
Causal. And like any animal, the pollinating bee has enabled a diverse phylum
of phrases and myths that humans trade to express our most hard-to-name
feelings.What
in our imagination changes after a peg in the environment is removed? What
could disappear from our minds, our fantasies, and our self-descriptors, if
nature is no longer a mirror?

Consider a museum of language. As artifacts, these poems are
the residue of a dead species--but they are also the offshoots of a playful,
abundant, delicate ecosystem. Playing with Bees covets what's left. At
the bottom of everything, we find the fragments of an ecologically intact dream:
an apocalypse in reverse.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1682831965
• ISBN13: 9781682831960
• Release Date: January 2024
• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• Length: 87 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 9.1"