FishWife

Overview

Linguistically acrobatic, FishWife interrogates dictionary definitions and the messy function of memory, reclaiming and redefining language to discover the self. This collection explores where and how embodiments of wifehood and identity overlap and entwine, alchemizing intuition into language and offering poetry as a mode of illumination. Traveling from sea to sky to earth, the speaker crosses literal and figurative borders of state lines and memory, challenging lexicography in a strange, liminal space of ghosts and grief. FishWife is a siren, a worker, a witch, a spinster, and a healer, grappling with identity, wifehood, marriage, and sometimes even fish.

Author Biography

Alysse Kathleen McCanna is the author of FishWife, published by Black Lawrence Press. Her poetry has appeared in North American Review, The Rumpus, Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, and other journals. She holds a PhD in English from Oklahoma State University, an MFA from Bennington College, and serves as Associate Editor of Pilgrimage Magazine. Alysse is an Associate Professor of English at Colorado Mountain College in the Vail Valley.