The Alphabet Conspiracy

Rita Mae Reese

Publication Year: 2011

The Alphabet Conspiracy takes its name from a 1950s-era school filmstrip of the same title. With a cast that includes patron saints for country girls and criminals, a Revolutionary War hero, the Wolfman, a sin-eater, John Wayne, and Johnny Cash, these poems swagger and sulk through an educational film turned film noir, replete with femme fatales in love. The Alphabet Conspiracy is about the ways in which language itself can function as a plot, keeping us estranged from ourselves, but also about the way it can be used as a tool for recovering our truest selves.

Published by: Red Hen Press

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Book Details

E-ISBN-13: 9780980040777
Print-ISBN-13: 9780980040739

Page Count: 80
Publication Year: 2011

Edition: First

The Alphabet Conspiracy

Title Page, Copyright, Acknowledgments, Dedication

Contents

Intercession

A Key to Pronunciation: /sälm/

Spurious Entry

Dear Reader

Waiting for Lightning

The Alphabet Conspiracy

Who Will Give My Father a Needle, a Mouse, a Cat, a Bird?

Meaning To Milk

Hunger

Vivian Buck, 1924-1932

My Mother Crochets the Lord’s Last Supper

Bondmaid

On the Maiden Voyage of Francis Marion, Revolutionary War Hero

This is the final day after years of sweetness

Lilith vs. the Movie Monsters

Saint Rita

The Whore’s Guide to Etymology

Ossuary of James

Civic Duty

The Sin-Eater

The Opposite of Falling Stars, 1978

Staying Under

Monongah, 1907

Seed Store Sestina

Almanac

Whatever You Do

Ur: What Signs & Wonders

Terrible Holy Joy: Reading the Norton Anthology of Poetry in Bed

Watson and the Shark

The American on His First Honeymoon

First Apartment

For Western Violence and Brief Sensuality: A Rondeau

In the ER Waiting Room with My Girlfriend

The Burning Barn

The Signal

This Is Not True

Smite, Smitten

In the Museum of Us

The Plagiarist

Within Five Miles of Home

Auto Life Fire

Mishap

Womanless

A History of Glass

You Bring Out the Dead in Me

Notes for Selected Poems

About the Author

Research Areas

Recommend

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