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How Festive the Ambulance
In this debut poetry collection by award-winning author Kim Fu, incantations, mythical creatures and extreme violence illuminate small scenes of domestic life and the banal tragedies of modern love and modern death.
A sharp edge of humour slices through Fu's poetry, drawing attention to the distance between contemporary existence and the basic facts of life: "In the classrooms of tomorrow, starved youth will be asked to imagine a culture that kept thin pamphlets of poetry pinned to a metal box full of food, who honoured their gods of plenty by describing ingredients in lush language."
Alternating between incisive wit and dark beauty, Fu brings the rich symbolism of fairy tales to bear on our image-obsessed age. From "The Unicorn Princess" "She applies gold spray paint to her horn each morning, / hoping to imitate the brass tusks / on the unicorns skewered to the carousel, / their brittle, painted smiles, harnesses / embedded in their backs and shellacked to high gloss." These poems are utterly of-the-moment, capturing the rage, irony and isolation of the era we live in.
A sharp edge of humour slices through Fu's poetry, drawing attention to the distance between contemporary existence and the basic facts of life: "In the classrooms of tomorrow, starved youth will be asked to imagine a culture that kept thin pamphlets of poetry pinned to a metal box full of food, who honoured their gods of plenty by describing ingredients in lush language."
Alternating between incisive wit and dark beauty, Fu brings the rich symbolism of fairy tales to bear on our image-obsessed age. From "The Unicorn Princess" "She applies gold spray paint to her horn each morning, / hoping to imitate the brass tusks / on the unicorns skewered to the carousel, / their brittle, painted smiles, harnesses / embedded in their backs and shellacked to high gloss." These poems are utterly of-the-moment, capturing the rage, irony and isolation of the era we live in.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published May 7, 2016
2 people are currently reading
345 people want to read
About the author
Kim Fu
11 books512 followersKim Fu is the author of two novels, a collection of poetry, and most recently, the story collection LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY, winner of the Washington State Book Award, the Pacific Northwest Book Award, and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, as well as a finalist for the Giller Prize, the Ignyte Awards, the Shirley Jackson Awards, and the Saroyan International Prize. Stories in this collection have been selected for Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and Best of the Net, featured on Levar Burton Reads and Selected Shorts, and optioned for television and film.
Their next novel, THE VALLEY OF VENGEFUL GHOSTS, is forthcoming from Tin House and HarperCollins Canada in March 2026.
Fu’s first novel, FOR TODAY I AM A BOY, won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and the Canadian Authors Association Emerging Writer Award. It was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and a Lambda Literary Award, as well as a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Their second novel, THE LOST GIRLS OF CAMP FOREVERMORE, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Ontario Library Association Evergreen Award. Fu has been longlisted for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize for mid-career authors. Their writing has appeared in the New York Times, Granta, the Atlantic, BOMB, Hazlitt, and the TLS.
Fu lives in Seattle, Washington.
Their next novel, THE VALLEY OF VENGEFUL GHOSTS, is forthcoming from Tin House and HarperCollins Canada in March 2026.
Fu’s first novel, FOR TODAY I AM A BOY, won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and the Canadian Authors Association Emerging Writer Award. It was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and a Lambda Literary Award, as well as a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Their second novel, THE LOST GIRLS OF CAMP FOREVERMORE, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Ontario Library Association Evergreen Award. Fu has been longlisted for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize for mid-career authors. Their writing has appeared in the New York Times, Granta, the Atlantic, BOMB, Hazlitt, and the TLS.
Fu lives in Seattle, Washington.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
February 5, 2017
It took me a long time to finish this little book of poetry. I didn't want it to end, and so I read it frugally, savouring every poem. Kim's writing is rich without being superfluous. There's a sharpness to her choice of words that kept me effortlessly absorbed. They elicited strong visuals and fully fleshed out settings.
I highly recommend reading How Festive The Ambulance. If you think poetry isn't your thing, let this book change your perspective.
On a personal note, Kim is a longtime friend of my husband and I. Poem II. on page 47 had my heart in my throat. I was touched to the point of tears to discover we had made it into Kim's book. I'll never forget the unreal and magical feeling of reading it for the first time.
I highly recommend reading How Festive The Ambulance. If you think poetry isn't your thing, let this book change your perspective.
On a personal note, Kim is a longtime friend of my husband and I. Poem II. on page 47 had my heart in my throat. I was touched to the point of tears to discover we had made it into Kim's book. I'll never forget the unreal and magical feeling of reading it for the first time.
April 12, 2021
Risky to read during silent reading in gr10 English class bc I’m at the front of the class, modelling silent reading, and I want to CRY. Not sad cry, like “poetry rules omg” cry.
The first part of this book reminds me of Angela carter. But like, better. I don’t know what to say about this collection except I love it.
The first part of this book reminds me of Angela carter. But like, better. I don’t know what to say about this collection except I love it.
January 15, 2024
It's always an equally sad and wonderful feeling to be caught up with a writer's work: because now there is nothing left to read yet also now I can lean back and wait for the next publication, and when it comes out jump in straight and anticipatory. And because I am someone who likes to put check marks behind things, it is above all a satisfying feeling to have read someone's complete catalog.
Kim Fu is fabulous writer who gave me speculative and spooky short stories, coming-of-age novels and now poetry. Looking at my rating averages, I seem hard to please but I think it is just that I have specific book desires. And Fu is able to meet those, every time. In this collection, I felt reminded of her most recent short story publication in that sense that it's a wild, weird mix. 3/4s are weird in the good way, 1/4 is weird in a "I'm not sure I can quite follow" way": overall that makes it a rather strong collection for me. I was not surprised that I enjoy her style even in poetry, the way she approaches her fiction always seemed like she had a poetic heart. This is evidence.
Turns out I liked a lot in the first half where the poems seem more imaginative, playing with fairy tale elements and lots of animals. The further you get into this collection the more "realistic" each piece seemed and I think I responded more to the imagery and creativity in the earlier parts. Take lines like this:
"The children were always wolves, fairy-tale tricksters,
bursting out of cloaks with bits of grandma in their teeth."
I had recently read more down to earth poetry, so it was great to jump into something more based in fantastical concepts. While I liked the writing, what often won me over were the concepts though. Again, some wild ideas in here, and often a sense of humor. Themes underneath that seemed to cover everything from childhood to death, from writing to loving, different places and different situations. I had a wonderful time flipping through these. Maybe they didn't blow me out of the water, but they made me smile and ponder and feel, and in my world that's plenty to get from a book.
This was maybe my favorite passage:
"You left Buenos Aires for New York, New York for Bombay,
Bombay for Paris. I'm trying to find beauty
in the overturned bowl of bread dough,
some word for grass other than "green".
I took your skeleton from the closet
and ground your bones for flour."
My list of the standout poems:
The Pig Man, Dark Circus/ Lifecycle of the Mole Woman: A Retirement Home/ How Festive the Ambulance/ Salt/ La Traviata/ You Need to Do the Laundry/ Forgive Me/ For Rent/ At the Poet Party/ It's Always Damp Here/ South of Maryland
Kim Fu is fabulous writer who gave me speculative and spooky short stories, coming-of-age novels and now poetry. Looking at my rating averages, I seem hard to please but I think it is just that I have specific book desires. And Fu is able to meet those, every time. In this collection, I felt reminded of her most recent short story publication in that sense that it's a wild, weird mix. 3/4s are weird in the good way, 1/4 is weird in a "I'm not sure I can quite follow" way": overall that makes it a rather strong collection for me. I was not surprised that I enjoy her style even in poetry, the way she approaches her fiction always seemed like she had a poetic heart. This is evidence.
Turns out I liked a lot in the first half where the poems seem more imaginative, playing with fairy tale elements and lots of animals. The further you get into this collection the more "realistic" each piece seemed and I think I responded more to the imagery and creativity in the earlier parts. Take lines like this:
"The children were always wolves, fairy-tale tricksters,
bursting out of cloaks with bits of grandma in their teeth."
I had recently read more down to earth poetry, so it was great to jump into something more based in fantastical concepts. While I liked the writing, what often won me over were the concepts though. Again, some wild ideas in here, and often a sense of humor. Themes underneath that seemed to cover everything from childhood to death, from writing to loving, different places and different situations. I had a wonderful time flipping through these. Maybe they didn't blow me out of the water, but they made me smile and ponder and feel, and in my world that's plenty to get from a book.
This was maybe my favorite passage:
"You left Buenos Aires for New York, New York for Bombay,
Bombay for Paris. I'm trying to find beauty
in the overturned bowl of bread dough,
some word for grass other than "green".
I took your skeleton from the closet
and ground your bones for flour."
My list of the standout poems:
The Pig Man, Dark Circus/ Lifecycle of the Mole Woman: A Retirement Home/ How Festive the Ambulance/ Salt/ La Traviata/ You Need to Do the Laundry/ Forgive Me/ For Rent/ At the Poet Party/ It's Always Damp Here/ South of Maryland
Read
November 21, 2023“I keep this knowledge // like a pistol in a pillowcase. / Nudging my head against the safety / as I roll and dream. // And when I take a lover / and press the barrel against their teeth / as they roll and dream, // they never flinch. / Some open their mouths wide, wider.”
vivid, snappy, what a delight. i enjoyed how each section felt like a distinct project / had distinct concerns.
favorite poems: “floorboard” and “let us change bodies”
vivid, snappy, what a delight. i enjoyed how each section felt like a distinct project / had distinct concerns.
favorite poems: “floorboard” and “let us change bodies”
July 5, 2022
⤳ 2.5
hm, this one had a lot of content I didn't understand, which is perfectly fine!—poetry is personal to some readers, the opposite to some—though I do think this needed something to tie the whole collection together. also, if I had understood the context (with my own research or otherwise) of the majority of them, I'm sure I would have cherished the experience more.
hm, this one had a lot of content I didn't understand, which is perfectly fine!—poetry is personal to some readers, the opposite to some—though I do think this needed something to tie the whole collection together. also, if I had understood the context (with my own research or otherwise) of the majority of them, I'm sure I would have cherished the experience more.
January 4, 2024
The poems, the themes, and the style did not move me. Her short stories book was 5-star for me, though.
June 6, 2018
Lots of good stuff. I especially liked Cradle Song and Four Teenage Girls at a Vietnamese Restaurant.
September 11, 2016
I was sad when the book ended, wanted to read more. Glad to see more Canadian poetresses! And I am the first one reviewing on here.. Looking forward to reading Kim Fu's novel, For Today I Am a Boy.
October 9, 2018
From prairiefire.ca. Review by Spenser Smith.
How Festive the Ambulance, Kim Fu’s debut book of poetry, is a startling exploration of the banality of modern life.
With dark and exacting language, Fu dissects life’s excess of moments and uncovers a consistency of destruction and disappointment.
Throughout How Festive the Ambulance, Fu sketches human and mythical characters to showcase the parallels of discontent in both real and imagined worlds. In “The Unicorn Princess”, Fu ironically imagines a unicorn (the standard in make-believe creatures) who desperately attempts to avoid her reality. The unicorn tries on wedding gowns at a bridal shop while bragging about “her imaginary fiancé” and describes her fictional wedding venue by reciting gaudy language from a wedding magazine (15). She revels in going to open houses to “riffle through drawers”, “sniff the sheets”, and “pocket tchotchkes” (15). As Fu masterfully reveals through the juxtaposition of fairy tale and pop culture, the unicorn is a reflection of the strangers’ life she intrudes upon:
She knows these people, as she knows the ones
on the Home & Garden channel:
sledgehammering through walls and revealing
their sodden, infested, but fixable souls. (15)
Fu’s dismal description of women’s roles in the natural world is unsettling. “Salt” tells the story of a young woman who reaches puberty at eighteen and is “preparing, ancestrally, to squat down and bear/fruit” (33). She finds herself “pissing on a stick in a mall bathroom stall/wishing her body were filled with sand” (33). Next, she is on an “anonymous bus/out toward the wasteland”, a metaphor for travelling to an abortion clinic, as she watches “skulls smaller than her palm/and the cracked bones of shapeless girls” (33).
The progression of the young woman’s circumstance is fleeting—puberty, pregnancy, abortion. Her life feels like a series of involuntary events and Fu partly achieves this effect through the quick pace of the poem. The young woman exists simply as an organism programmed to reproduce, and despite her deep aversion, she succumbs to her “humid, fertile darkness:/the black soil of equatorial Amazon.” (33). In “Lifecycle of the Mole Woman”, Fu uses the same terrene language. A mole woman marries a mole prince amongst “towers” of “inflamed earth”, “the black forest of a black forest cake” (16). At the wedding, the mole prince “tenderly gouges out” the mole woman’s eyes (16).
Fu is also interested in what the use of language says about our existence. While examining a restaurant menu in “Chicken the Size of Beach Balls”, the speaker describes English as having “serifs and curlicues/more complex than the Mayan’s” (36). The speaker then asks the reader to imagine “classrooms of tomorrow” when children will be asked to study a culture that:
honoured their gods of plenty by describing ingredients
in lush language, recounting which chickens ran free, which ones ate
flax, which ones lived and died in the dark. (36)
In what feels like a found poem by eavesdropping, “Four Teenage Girls at a Vietnamese Restaurant” chronicles the seemingly futile conversation of four teenage girls:
are those Nike no Lululemon
they have this v that makes your butt look awesome
and they would hide a thong
did you say you can see my thong
no I said they would hide a thong (60)
Yet, by examining How Festive the Ambulance as a whole, the conversation (and by extension, the existence) of these young girls is on par with every other character in the book. Whether you’re an escapist unicorn, assaulted mole woman, or Lululemon consumer, life is equally unyielding and absurd.
How Festive the Ambulance is a sombre, engrossing read. The book contains a wild mix of dread and humour, and I was often left unsure what to feel. Fu is unreserved in her approach, yet her bluntness holds a level of complexity and metaphor that makes each reread of a poem very rewarding.
How Festive the Ambulance, Kim Fu’s debut book of poetry, is a startling exploration of the banality of modern life.
With dark and exacting language, Fu dissects life’s excess of moments and uncovers a consistency of destruction and disappointment.
Throughout How Festive the Ambulance, Fu sketches human and mythical characters to showcase the parallels of discontent in both real and imagined worlds. In “The Unicorn Princess”, Fu ironically imagines a unicorn (the standard in make-believe creatures) who desperately attempts to avoid her reality. The unicorn tries on wedding gowns at a bridal shop while bragging about “her imaginary fiancé” and describes her fictional wedding venue by reciting gaudy language from a wedding magazine (15). She revels in going to open houses to “riffle through drawers”, “sniff the sheets”, and “pocket tchotchkes” (15). As Fu masterfully reveals through the juxtaposition of fairy tale and pop culture, the unicorn is a reflection of the strangers’ life she intrudes upon:
She knows these people, as she knows the ones
on the Home & Garden channel:
sledgehammering through walls and revealing
their sodden, infested, but fixable souls. (15)
Fu’s dismal description of women’s roles in the natural world is unsettling. “Salt” tells the story of a young woman who reaches puberty at eighteen and is “preparing, ancestrally, to squat down and bear/fruit” (33). She finds herself “pissing on a stick in a mall bathroom stall/wishing her body were filled with sand” (33). Next, she is on an “anonymous bus/out toward the wasteland”, a metaphor for travelling to an abortion clinic, as she watches “skulls smaller than her palm/and the cracked bones of shapeless girls” (33).
The progression of the young woman’s circumstance is fleeting—puberty, pregnancy, abortion. Her life feels like a series of involuntary events and Fu partly achieves this effect through the quick pace of the poem. The young woman exists simply as an organism programmed to reproduce, and despite her deep aversion, she succumbs to her “humid, fertile darkness:/the black soil of equatorial Amazon.” (33). In “Lifecycle of the Mole Woman”, Fu uses the same terrene language. A mole woman marries a mole prince amongst “towers” of “inflamed earth”, “the black forest of a black forest cake” (16). At the wedding, the mole prince “tenderly gouges out” the mole woman’s eyes (16).
Fu is also interested in what the use of language says about our existence. While examining a restaurant menu in “Chicken the Size of Beach Balls”, the speaker describes English as having “serifs and curlicues/more complex than the Mayan’s” (36). The speaker then asks the reader to imagine “classrooms of tomorrow” when children will be asked to study a culture that:
honoured their gods of plenty by describing ingredients
in lush language, recounting which chickens ran free, which ones ate
flax, which ones lived and died in the dark. (36)
In what feels like a found poem by eavesdropping, “Four Teenage Girls at a Vietnamese Restaurant” chronicles the seemingly futile conversation of four teenage girls:
are those Nike no Lululemon
they have this v that makes your butt look awesome
and they would hide a thong
did you say you can see my thong
no I said they would hide a thong (60)
Yet, by examining How Festive the Ambulance as a whole, the conversation (and by extension, the existence) of these young girls is on par with every other character in the book. Whether you’re an escapist unicorn, assaulted mole woman, or Lululemon consumer, life is equally unyielding and absurd.
How Festive the Ambulance is a sombre, engrossing read. The book contains a wild mix of dread and humour, and I was often left unsure what to feel. Fu is unreserved in her approach, yet her bluntness holds a level of complexity and metaphor that makes each reread of a poem very rewarding.
May 29, 2020
How Festive the Cultural Acclimation?
If it be the job of the poet to capture the zeitgeist of the moment or reflect the feeling of the times in the same way that Shakespeare captured Jacobean society (or more certainly the language of Elizabethan England) or the way that the Psalms captured Biblical times then a modern poet must capture modern times surely? In How Festive the Ambulance, an incisive stab at the quest to be heard...
Full Review
If it be the job of the poet to capture the zeitgeist of the moment or reflect the feeling of the times in the same way that Shakespeare captured Jacobean society (or more certainly the language of Elizabethan England) or the way that the Psalms captured Biblical times then a modern poet must capture modern times surely? In How Festive the Ambulance, an incisive stab at the quest to be heard...
Full Review
July 6, 2022
Poetry is not for me. This would’ve been a one star had I not liked “Salt” so much. I feel like these are probably good, but I just wasn’t a fan. I liked Fu’s short story collection, though, so maybe I’ll check out more of her work.
October 4, 2018
I have no idea WTF I just read, but it was awesome!
January 2, 2022
3.5- some portions were outstanding and some I fell asleep during.
February 2, 2022
Es un poemario curioso, las temáticas raras y la ironía (?) de algunos poemas fueron mi parte favorita. Pero, hasta ahí, la verdad.
October 7, 2023
Not really my thing, I liked her short stories far more
December 10, 2023
Superb. This collection is wild, fantastical, enthralling, and more than a little bizarre. I read this in one sitting and then read it again. Simply so well done.
January 15, 2024
2.5* meh
February 27, 2024
Poems are tough for me to read a lot at once but I enjoyed reading these. Forever a Kim Fu fan
March 5, 2017
Not an easy collection to read, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Desperate, visceral, stinking of the human body in all of its uncomfortable iterations, Fu peels back the layers that we usually put up to protect ourselves, and lays bare the sometimes-direst moments of a life.
December 20, 2016
My gateway drug to a collector's mentality. Say that you're ill - not a poet.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews