50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse

By Karyna McGlynn

This book is of course for the many Kate Bush fans of the world, but it’s certainly not necessary to be well acquainted with Bush’s work to enjoy this collection. It’s also suited for any fans of 80s and 90s pop culture. Some allusions reference, for instance: Peter Gabriel, Roxy Music, Helmut Newton, Carrie(film), Poltergeist, Interview with a Vampire, The Silence of the Lambs, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Lowell, Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, Julie London, Wilhelm Reich, Bridge to Terabithia, MTV, and so many more.

Given the Kate Bush influence on this, we’d also love to push this in the UK as much as possible. McGlynn would also love to do events in the UK if possible! We’d love any available help with this. Other target audiences include LGBTQ+ readers, anyone who grew up with MTV in the 80s and 90s, etc.

It would be INCREDIBLE to get someone from SNL to blurb or push this book, given Kate Bush's SNL performance that introduced her to the US. If any sales reps have contacts or suggestions for this, please send them along!

McGlynn’s most recent book with us, Hothouse, was named a NYT Editor’s Choice in 2017.

Recent awards, among many others, include the Rumi Prize for Poetry from The Arts & Letters, selected by Cate Marvin, and a Pushcart Prize Special Mention.

Karyna McGlynn is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing & English Literature at Christian Brothers University in Memphis. She plans to tour extensively, and after living and studying in so many cities, she has a vast network of connections around the country. Possible cities where McGlynn has lived previously include: Marfa, TX (where she is also getting married this year), Austin, TX, Houston, TX, Ann Arbor, MI, Seattle, WA, Oberlin, OH, Madison, WI, Jacksonville, IL. She also has contacts for potential readers and audience members in: Tuscaloosa, AL, San Diego, CA, Atlanta, GA, Louisville, KY, Chicago, IL, Kalamazoo, MI, Minneapolis, MN, Kansas City, MO, Oxford, MS, Portland, OR, Nashville, TN, Sewanee, TV, San Antonio, TX, Madison, WI, Milkwaukee, WI. McGlynn woud also love to read in the UK.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sarabande Books
• Release date: Apr 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781946448958

Book preview

Cover: 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse by Karyna McGlynn

poems

Karyna McGlynn

50 THINGS KATE BUSH

TAUGHT ME ABOUT THE

MULTI VERSE

Logo: Sarabande Books

Copyright © 2022 by Karyna McGlynn

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.

Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Names: McGlynn, Karyna, author.

Title: 50 things Kate Bush taught me about the multiverse: poems / Karyna McGlynn.

Other Titles: Fifty things Kate Bush taught me about the multiverse

Description: Louisville, KY: Sarabande Books, 2022

Identifiers: ISBN 9781946448941 (paperback) | ISBN 9781946448958 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Sex—Poetry. | Mental health—Poetry. | Climatic changes—Poetry.

Offenses against the person—Poetry. | Bush, Kate—Influence. | LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3613.C486 A15 2022 (print) | LCC PS3613.C486 (e-book)

DDC 811/.6—dc23

Cover design by Danika Isdahl.

Cover art by Karyna McGlynn.

Interior design by Alban Fischer.

Printed in Canada.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

—for KT & all my teachers

CONTENTS

WAKING THE WITCH

A Real Artist Makes Us Fall in Love with Ghosts

If You Ask Peter Gabriel to Astral Project

The Girls I Grew Up with Were Hard

Love Poem When We Run Out of Chickens

Halloween in the Anthropocene

Application to Model for Helmut Newton

How to Die in Your Dreams

You Must Wake Up

Witches Be Everywhere

A CORAL ROOM

I Was Born in a Cloud

We Sing Mozart’s Requiem in the Back of the Cruiser

Only Two Things Will Save Us Now

This Was Supposed to Be an Ode to Aqua Net

You See, I’m All Grown Up Now

Where to Stash Your Wax Lips

I Thought No One Would Ever Love Me

On the Dubious Honor of Being Prettiest

No Corroborating Evidence

It’s Sadder If You’re a Girl

PULL OUT THE PIN

50 Inciting Incidents

Sometimes a Guy Named Kevin Launches His Raft in Your River

How to Talk the Manic Away

Golden Age Drinking

Fun Factory

I Stand Outside This Woman’s Work

I Wake Up in the Underworld of My Own Dirty Purse

How to Stop Raping the Muse

WOW

Come Up & Be a Kite

Tiffany Conditioner

If Your Glamour Is Real

White Dress vs. Red Dress

50 Other Words for Snow

If You Keep Hitting Those High Notes

Nature Is So Melodramatic, Always

If Our Art Must Outlive Us

Notes

Acknowledgments

I just always thought of her as like the Phantom of the Opera … living in this big castle with a piano that was ten times the size of a regular piano, just playing the piano all day with sheer curtains blowing in the