The Bringers of Fruit: An Oratorio

Elizabeth Switaj

Elizabeth Switaj’s Bringers of Fruit continues Switaj’s long standing engagement with myth, seen in her previous books, A Broken Sanctuary and Magdalene & the Mermaids. With the repeating refrain “I almost got away with it,” readers wait expectantly for a confrontation that doesn’t come, but instead morphs into alternate narratives. Unlike other poets’ engagements with lyrical tropes, Switaj does not use mythology as a form of coerced conventionality that is often seen; she’s got code. These myths, updated for the modern world, have MP3s, Ray-bans, html coding, “join my band,” as well as scientific language and imagery: we encounter “prions,” “origami cells,” “nucleotides,” “monomers,” and “cyanosis.” These poems show an examined emotionality fused with the abstract as survival technique – “cerebral snow.” — Carrie Hunter

Corpselords and chthonic gods congregate in Elizabeth Switaj’s underworldly “grumble of lights.” Myth and form alike shiver, shrivel, and arrive in the space “where moon/ snails suck the marrow from bones/ they’ve pierced.” These necrocantos sing the fugue songs of the dead that won’t die. May we all have a psychopomp as deft of ear and image as Switaj to lead us through this encoded hell. — Candice Wuehle

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Bringers of Fruit: An Oratorio is a polyvocalic retelling of the Persephone myth that investigates memory, code, and relationships.

Out Now! // February 2, 2022

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Kate Switaj is an academic administrator and cat rescuer in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. She holds a PhD from Queen's University Belfast and an MFA from New College of California. Her first collection of poetry, Magdalence & the Mermaids, was published by Paper Kite Press in 2009 and her book of literary criticism, James Joyce's Teaching Life and Methods was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. She previously taught in Japan and China and has been diving with bull sharks, whale sharks, and manta rays.

ISBN: 9781948687553

Poetry