F0NO18 // Krystal Languell – Systems Thinking with Flowers (print; book)
$15.95
Release Date: February 15, 2022
Description
A poetry collection about conspiring to do right within the constraints of inherited structures, Systems Thinking with Flowers critiques unearned authority in its many guises. In two sections, the book chronicles the complex emotional gymnastics required for existence in male-dominated and colonialist environments, such as professional sports, museums, and other institutions.
The first section zeroes in on Major League Baseball, referencing specific players and teams as the poems consider the ways in which the spectator is implicated by the stadium environment. Constant advertising is a given (the eighth inning is brought to you by Kars for Kids), but fans can do the trick of seeing it and seeing past it.
While the second section of the collection wanders away from sports, the poems find the same capitalist and racist logics undergirding settings such as gas stations, art museums, and the workplace. “Fatigued with proving my merit nightly,” the speaker in this book longs for a reprieve that does not come. “My gritty leather death event goes all kaput.” Under such circumstances, any activity outside the cash economy may build a new world bit by bit.
Systems Thinking is a human resources concept that honors the complexity of human behavior by suggesting that workplace challenges should be addressed holistically. It is the opposite of whack-a-mole. And while you’re at it, get some fresh flowers. Enjoy your life. You’re worth it.
Chosen by Rae Armantrout, Systems Thinking with Flowers was the winner of the 2019 Fonograf Editions Open Genre Book Prize. Volume Foreword by Rae Armantrout.
E-book available here.
About the Author
Krystal Languell lives in Chicago. She is the author of three previous books of poetry: Call the Catastrophists (BlazeVox, 2011), Gray Market (1913 Press, 2016), and Quite Apart (University of Akron Press, 2019). Additionally, she has published six chapbooks, including Diamonds in the Flesh, a collaboration with Robert Alan Wendeborn, (Double Cross Press, 2015) and Archive Theft, a collection of interviews, (Essay Press, 2015).
She has received residencies and fellowships from The Poetry Project, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Vermont Studio Center.
For ten years, she helped coordinate the activities of Belladonna* Collaborative and has published the feminist poetry journal Bone Bouquet since 2010. She held many titles while working as an adjunct in New York City for seven years, including finally Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities & Media Studies at Pratt Institute.
Languell earned a BA from Indiana University and an MFA from New Mexico State University.
Praise
PRAISE FOR Systems Thinking with Flowers
“Yes. There is a sharp intelligence in these poems, negotiating between distance and the yearning for affiliation, jaded disillusionment and flickers of hope or at least relief…”
— excerpted from Rae Armantrout’s “Foreword” for Systems Thinking with Flowers
It is no surprise that Krystal Languell is a baseball fan, as this collection is itself a shutout, a perfect game, an artist channeling the higher self in every moment. The arsenal of work on display here covers the full range. Some of the poems are locked in fastballs straight and true, others are sliders, curveballs and change ups that catch you unready, and every so often one comes screaming at your brainpan to move you back off the bag you were crowding with expectation and assumption. I’m calling it now, Languell is taking the pennant in four this year.
— Mat Alano-Martin
What happens when a woman writes a baseball poem or a book full of them? In Systems Thinking with Flowers, Languell does just that and delivers a sharp and witty collection that will appeal to baseball fans and non-fans alike. In her skilled hands and confident voice, Languell crafts an atmosphere of sport and play, and makes the language of broadcasts and analysis exciting and new. This book is filled with poems that are lively, imaginative, and smart–all riding an undercurrent of tough love, like the rare baseball manager who always tells it straight.
— Gina Myers
Masterfully linking multiple surroundings seamlessly, Krystal Languell’s fourth collection invites us to take a hard look at womanhood, competition and impulse. In this book Languell is as provocative as she is tender: “When I cry at a ceremony, I hate it a little, but I wish I hated it more.” Systems Thinking with Flowers explores the most unique sensations that exist in our daily life, basking in the 9th inning.
— Chia-Lun Chang