Puss 'N Boötes: Dark Poems

by Polly Alice McCann

In this new collection, Polly Alice plunges her familiar style of lyrical free verse into dark and stormy dreamscapes where readers will find their way back by the flickering light of folk characters reimagined: Eve, The White Cat, Dorothy of Oz, Red Riding Hood, Gerda & The Snow Queen, and mythical characters from Spring constellation like Boötes, the hunter and shepherd, to tie in what Polly calls the readers’ primitive emotions or our “Mother Natures.” Puss ‘N Boötes is Polly’s third book of narrative poetry and a companion book to her first two collections, Kinlight (2017) and Tea with Alice (2019) both by Flying Ketchup Press. Find out more at pollymccann.com.

100 pages, Paperback

Published April 8, 2020

About the author

POLLY ALICE MCCANN’s lyrical poetry paints a picture of the narratives of the internal heartland. That’s not surprising since she is also an artist. Her art and poetry have been published in US newspapers and magazines most recently in Rattle magazine. A professor of English, she is also the founder and manager of FLYING KETCHUP PRESS. She credits much of her creative work due to her research on dreams which won her the 2014 Ernest Hartmann award from Berkeley, CA. Find her first three poetry collections, Kinlight, Tea with Alice, and Puss ‘N Boötes online. Polly Alice has also edited two collections of short stories and two poetry anthologies. The most recent, “The Very Edge” is a collection of 37 international artists and poets. With her MFA in Writing from Hamline University in St. Paul, with an emphasis in poetry and short fiction, her poetry has published internationally in journals such as Naugatuck River, and arc24 in Tel Aviv and elsewhere. She says her favorite thing is to tell stories-- other people's, her own-- maybe yours.

In her first book of poetry, Kinlight, she uses narrative free verse to explore the measures taken as a woman to find a place to become visible: 'I will not forget,' she writes. 'I am woman, all things began in me.' Ghosts and vapors, flour and light, her first collection remain subtle in color, but dives into bone and marrow of women in today's America.