Gin & Bleach, Catherine Wing
Gin & Bleach: two clear liquids aiming for purity, bordering the toxic. The clarity's either a spirited disinfectant or an immaculate intoxication. The book takes its title from a line of Cody Walker's: “Blessed is the woman who mixes gin and bleach.” Wing’s poems are soaked in that cocktail, mixing doubt, loneliness, rough elbows, and razor focus. Gin & Bleach is two parts fist-shaking (at the gods, at the world, at oneself) and one part head-in-one's-hand. It riddles for a straight answer, aiming for both play and Frost’s play for mortal stakes.
Additional Info
Catherine Wing grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, on a street bounded by two florists, one cemetery, and a Carnegie library. She received a B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. from the University of Washington. Her first book of poems, Enter Invisible, was published in 2005 and nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Poetry, The Nation, and The New Republic, as well as featured on "The Writer's Almanac," and included in Best American Erotic Poems, and Best American Poetry 2010. She has won fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Her second collection, Gin & Bleach, is the 2010 selection of the Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature and is due out in 2012. She lives in Ohio, where she teaches poetry at Kent State University and serves on the board of the Wick Poetry Center.
PRAISE FOR CATHERINE WING:
“Every publisher announces a debut collection by claiming that the poet’s voice is fresh, groundbreaking, surprising. Wing’s actually is all of that.... What is most compelling about her work is its utterly unpredictable language… Wing is an impressive talent, well worth watching.”
—Booklist, starred review