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Cure All
The debut full-length collection of poetic fictions from Santa Fe, New Mexico author Kim Parko.
“These surreal pieces are quietly intense and fervently alive. They offer visions both meditative and alarming. Animated by hyperacuity of consciousness, Cure All balances on that fulcrum between smoldering control and pregnant invention, scientific observation and an exacting madness. The literal and the figurative, fact and fancy, degeneration and rebirth all chase each other, mate and merge. The mind, the body and the seething natural world engulf one another. Cyril Connolly wrote, ‘Imagination...is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshots of reality.’ That elixir is the rich, rushing lifeblood of this collection.” —Amy Gerstler, author of Ghost Girl
“Uncanny and perverse, the poetic fictions of Kim Parko’s Cure All act as electrodes to stimulate unsuspected and possibly long-unused yet sublimely meaningful circuitry in the brain.” —Daniel Grandbois, author of Unlucky Lucky Days
“Parko’s Cure All is a wonderful combination of striking images, clever word play, and personal heartbreak—all simmering together and shining in a book that is sure to make many ‘best-of-the-year’ lists.” —Shane Jones, author of Light Boxes
“To call these pieces unique isn’t enough. With her fractured shards of advice, sweet little nightmares, tunneled eyes and sprouted scales, Kim Parko presents a twisting puzzle of fire blights and lonely spines. This book will crawl into your house.” —Amelia Gray, author of AM/PM
“These surreal pieces are quietly intense and fervently alive. They offer visions both meditative and alarming. Animated by hyperacuity of consciousness, Cure All balances on that fulcrum between smoldering control and pregnant invention, scientific observation and an exacting madness. The literal and the figurative, fact and fancy, degeneration and rebirth all chase each other, mate and merge. The mind, the body and the seething natural world engulf one another. Cyril Connolly wrote, ‘Imagination...is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshots of reality.’ That elixir is the rich, rushing lifeblood of this collection.” —Amy Gerstler, author of Ghost Girl
“Uncanny and perverse, the poetic fictions of Kim Parko’s Cure All act as electrodes to stimulate unsuspected and possibly long-unused yet sublimely meaningful circuitry in the brain.” —Daniel Grandbois, author of Unlucky Lucky Days
“Parko’s Cure All is a wonderful combination of striking images, clever word play, and personal heartbreak—all simmering together and shining in a book that is sure to make many ‘best-of-the-year’ lists.” —Shane Jones, author of Light Boxes
“To call these pieces unique isn’t enough. With her fractured shards of advice, sweet little nightmares, tunneled eyes and sprouted scales, Kim Parko presents a twisting puzzle of fire blights and lonely spines. This book will crawl into your house.” —Amelia Gray, author of AM/PM
122 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2010
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154 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 18, 2020
3.5 ⭐
April 4, 2016
3.5 Stars.
This is a very surreal and strange work of...I hesitate to call it fiction (that's what it's billed as)...poetry. Parko's world in Cure All is populated and narrated by--on the whole--non-human actors, including animals, vegetation, and machinery. It is very strange. It would be of interest to those challenging the anthropocentric narrative generally, but specifically those who are curious about pressing against the boundaries and limits of the divide between human and non-human.
This is a very surreal and strange work of...I hesitate to call it fiction (that's what it's billed as)...poetry. Parko's world in Cure All is populated and narrated by--on the whole--non-human actors, including animals, vegetation, and machinery. It is very strange. It would be of interest to those challenging the anthropocentric narrative generally, but specifically those who are curious about pressing against the boundaries and limits of the divide between human and non-human.
March 24, 2010
To call these pieces unique isn't enough. With her fractured shards of advice, sweet little nightmares, tunneled eyes and sprouted scales, Kim Parko presents a twisting puzzle of fire blights and lonely spines.
October 16, 2012
from publisher
Read 10/9/12 - 10/10/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers who appreciate vivid imagery and stories detailing with things you would never have imagined on your own
Pgs: 119
Publisher: CakeTrain
A revolver pining for a light bulb can only lead in disaster. A woman allows a spider to eat her face as a form of beauty treatment. Reflections that detach themselves from their reflectees.
The flash fiction contained within Kim Parko's Cure All infiltrates your brain like a fever dream. Images of dark hallways and wispy spiderwebs dance through your thoughts as you lose yourself in the unusual worlds she weaves.
Recurring themes appear throughout this collection of twisted realities - morbid, silent morticians gathering around situations; The Curtain, at once protective and deceiving, capitalized as though it is a proper name; and Molly and Bruce, a couple who sometimes hang out with our narrator and move in and out of the collection, like little children, touching everything and always in motion.
For me, when reading stories such as these, I always wonder what the writer was like as growing up. Did she stay up late and watch too many scary movies as a little girl? Did she spend a lot of time lost in her own head, troubling out amazing and outrageous universes for her toys when she played with them? Did she jot down her dreams upon waking in the hopes of deciphering their codes? Did she work long, lonely hours on a graveyard shift somewhere where her mind could wander and build these bizarre worlds for her characters to populate? Would I know her just by looking at her?
Whatever the influence...Parko's surreal prose, intense imagery, and grim perspectives make this a collection worth consuming.
Read 10/9/12 - 10/10/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers who appreciate vivid imagery and stories detailing with things you would never have imagined on your own
Pgs: 119
Publisher: CakeTrain
A revolver pining for a light bulb can only lead in disaster. A woman allows a spider to eat her face as a form of beauty treatment. Reflections that detach themselves from their reflectees.
The flash fiction contained within Kim Parko's Cure All infiltrates your brain like a fever dream. Images of dark hallways and wispy spiderwebs dance through your thoughts as you lose yourself in the unusual worlds she weaves.
Recurring themes appear throughout this collection of twisted realities - morbid, silent morticians gathering around situations; The Curtain, at once protective and deceiving, capitalized as though it is a proper name; and Molly and Bruce, a couple who sometimes hang out with our narrator and move in and out of the collection, like little children, touching everything and always in motion.
For me, when reading stories such as these, I always wonder what the writer was like as growing up. Did she stay up late and watch too many scary movies as a little girl? Did she spend a lot of time lost in her own head, troubling out amazing and outrageous universes for her toys when she played with them? Did she jot down her dreams upon waking in the hopes of deciphering their codes? Did she work long, lonely hours on a graveyard shift somewhere where her mind could wander and build these bizarre worlds for her characters to populate? Would I know her just by looking at her?
Whatever the influence...Parko's surreal prose, intense imagery, and grim perspectives make this a collection worth consuming.
May 16, 2013
This book is about language and sadness, oftentimes the sadness of language. The words are roads to impossible destinations, a thousand detours in only a fraction of that many pages. It is a metaphor to describe metaphors. If you're tired of what you already know, then it is, most importantly, the panacea of the title.
October 30, 2017
The day began with the usual merriment and ended with an unusual death. After the incident, we crowded helplessly around the victim. There was really no longer a body per se, only a spine with nerves extending from it like centipede legs. It crawled like a centipede too, but without its head. People called to the spine, which was vicious in the way of the mortally scarred. Its nerve-legs were inflamed, and every time the legs touched a surface, they recoiled. There was no soothing the rawness of injury, so after many hours we left the spine to writhe alone.
Days later, we returned to bury the spine and were alarmed to see three girls playing with it like a doll. The girls clothed it in a fetching sundress, tied a floral headscarf around the knob of its newly formed brain.
some of these were straight out of my strange dreams/nightmares.
feels like a collection karin dreijer andersson might enjoy.
March 25, 2013
Finished this book over the course of an afternoon spent tucked away in a small wooden closet. How does Kim Parko know what she knows? There's an uncanny precision and logic to Parko's absurd methods. A book to dream about.
March 7, 2010
Some books glare out imagination over a mechanical creative process. This is pure imagination.
March 5, 2010
The surreal images in this captivating book transport you to a dream-like world that is totally unique and mind-bending. This is a highly original work that is both beautiful and frightening.
Want to read
May 21, 2012http://www.caketrain.org/pdf/cureall.pdf
from what i saw here very interesting read
from what i saw here very interesting read
January 20, 2015
talk about it a bit here: http://www.5cense.com/14/376.htm
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews