The Animal Within

By Kathrine Yets

The Animal Within is filled with poems that want to swim together, focusing on animal and human nature. A few are ekphrastic, based on photography by Jaimie Huycke and Dennis Liddell. Dive in and readers find a world where horses speak their minds, crawdaddies sing, and mermaids find lust. Wolves howl "ahwoo at the full strawberry harvest moon in June," and birds do more than flap their wings, but rather create a voice for the oppressed. Humans step in, personas based off the author, and consider loss, depression, and love— inner-self mixed with creature habits— scratching down a lover's back or crying in a zoo. One persona connects with water, skinny-dipping her way into a galaxy reflection, "as quiet as you would expect it to be [she] sends a ripple through the moon." Hawiaain Goddesses tell their story about how the Yoni Crater came to be with a crash. Nature takes note and gets noticed, exploring transcendental and organic aspects. "The stream has no objection" as the poet takes liberty in playing with ideas of what it might be saying. A devine devotion to creatures large and small— flora and fauna finding a voice among calm and chaos, depending on the scene created. Each poem cups a piece of life— ideas not too far fetched— mundane and supernatural. With sounds all around, the author uses anaphora, alliteration, assonance, and other devices to give these animals and personas personality of their own. This chapbook implores readers to take a hiatus, step outside of themselves, and experience the animal within. 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Unsolicited Press
• Release date: Jan 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201437343

Book preview

The Animal Within

Kathrine Yets

Copyright © 2021 Kathrine Yets

All Rights Reserved

Published by Unsolicited Press

First Edition 2021.

Cover Designer: Kathryn Gerhardt

Cover Art: Sarah Richter

Editor: Kristen Marckmann

Acknowledgements

Kapo-keho-lele Fickle Muses

Plath's Birthday Wisconsin Writers Association Jade Ring Award 2018

Return to Revelations Urights

Skinny Dipping in Ottowa Straylight, Universal Oneness: Magnum Opus Anthology

Small Prayer Blue Heron Review

The river Antinarrative (different form)

Contents

Acknowledgements

Contents

Bless You

Small Prayer

King of the Zoo

Caught a Crayfish

I’m Outta Here

Wolf

Purple Finch

After My Mother’s Diagnosis

Return to Revelations

A Day Depressed at the Zoo

Feeling Good

Plath’s Birthday

Kapo-keho-lele

The Mermaid

Skinny Dipping in Ottawa

The river

Fall Stream

Take me back to six in the morning,

Always Only

The Animal Within

About the Author

About the Press

Bless You

Suddenly I realize / That if I stepped out of my body I would break / Into