Flotsam

by Catherine Kyle

Catherine Kyle has crafted a poetic world filled with magical realism, in a traditional and non-traditional sense. The lyrics in Flotsam are imbued with spells. She invokes the ocean, ships, and urban and rural villages to craft a modern fairy tale. This is a chapbook that explores unconscious and conscious desires. Kyle expertly wields vivid imagery, lovely rhythms, textured verbs and taut metaphors. This chapbook explores the idea that “the line between flotsam and jetsam is want.” We learn that “humans distinguish the things waves do not.” By the end, Flotsam takes readers through the waters, across landscapes real and imagined to transform us until “we have become / the forest itself.”

Genres: Poetry

29 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2015

About the author

Catherine Broadwall (formerly Catherine Kyle) is the author of Water Spell (Cornerstone Press, 2025), Fulgurite (Cornerstone Press, 2023), Shelter in Place (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), and other collections. Her writing has appeared in Bellingham Review, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. She was the winner of the 2023 Paula Svonkin Creative Arts Award and the 2020 COG Poetry Award, as well as a finalist for the poetry categories of the 2021 Mississippi Review Prize and 2021 Pinch Literary Awards. She is an assistant professor at DigiPen Institute of Technology, where she teaches creative writing and literature.

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Reviews

[Brandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I particularly liked the poems "Return," "Cleaning Fish," and "Tide Pools."

[Jackie Craven · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving, lyrical collection

This short series forms a single, musical narrative. I think this is the poet's first chapbook, and I'll be watching for more.

[Alexander Thorne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is the flotsam that rolls in for the author? Or is it for you?