In the seventeenth century, the closest a woman ever got to a theater was just outside the door, selling sweet "china" oranges at sixpence each—or maybe herself—to the audience. Simone Muench's third collection of poetry, Orange Crush, pays tribute to these figures, known as "Orange Girls," in passionate, astonishing language. The poems travel in and out of history in what Muench calls "a loop instead of a line," cannily reclaiming centuries of lost women and revisiting the various binds in which they find themselves. Her "language portraits" also pay homage to contemporary women, particularly writers, thus re-embodying and reinventing the idea of  "Orange Girls."  Muench's poems seem to stem directly from the four elements—earth, wind, water, and fire—and affect us immediately, more like drugs or fantastic food. It's been a long time since we’ve had an American expressionist poet like this, combining intellect, compassion, and lightning associations.

Read

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You Were Long Days and I Was Tiger-Lined

master wear a mask when you break out the leather
the whip’s encounter loosens the back to plumage

how strange whip’s sibilance moving
through ears like a wet ribbon        harmonium

harpsichord        its lisp then nothingness

it once lived past the pecan orchard        past the barn
where a young girl hung herself in summer

with the reins of her horse    past the river and its stash
of leaves    small animals’ waterlogged bodies

master the whip is whispering          birds gather
around her handle               the night thick with red feathers

I am encumbered by the whip’s lasciviousness
by the monarchy of your posture         by breath and braid  

master you are a totem pole with zapata mustache while my back
is the z-coordinate      pattern on vellum            satsuma plum

the room grows thick with incisions         weather me better master
white votives         and odor of cascarilla float to the river

stutter          startle     wind can carry a whip but how
can a dead girl swerve into flight and miss the sky altogether

Blurbs

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“Though Simone Muench's Orange Crush is riveted with poignant moments of history, each poem revels in a contemporary passion that holds the reader in an abiding now. I believe and trust each highly-tuned moment, every little, intrinsic turn. This poet's music is unique and personal, but it's also public; words collide softly to create a sound of feeling that registers in the body and mind. Orange Crush celebrates everydayness, while always moving toward the revelatory."

—Yusef Komunyakaa

"A sweet fever of a voice lures us into pictures of bone bonnets, whip stripes, and dead girls. These poems freeze time. Simone pulls absolute beauty and light from these dark moments. I'm in and hooked."

—Tim Rutili of Califone

“It is difficult to say in a few words all that should be, could be said of this powerful book. Its language is lush, exacting, and active; its sounds alert, nervy, and quick. All this may be seductive, lulling, entrancing, but then there are the facts of violence and grief one encounters, often wrenching combinations of the two.  When a poem says:  ‘my skin is soft/the safety's off’ I quake, shudder, and brace myself.”

—Dara Wier

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