The Guide Bundle by Rachel Guvenc
“Life is a journey, not a destination” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Red Bird is offering a bundle of chapbook “guides” to inspire perseverance through the lengthening nights and wintry days ahead. Curl up and explore E. Kristin Anderson’s mysterious poetry in A Guide for the Practical Abductee, or mingle with the embodied cities of Kelly Magee’s A Guide to Strange Places, then stroll through Chicago’s gritty streets with Lisa Higgs’ unintentional guide to the big city. These superb writers will guide you to new places and experiences from the comfort of your own home, each with a unique perspective and voice.
A Guide for the Practical Abductee is a playful yet eerie take on mystery, folklore, and the supernatural. It’s an obsessive look at the human desire to explore the unexplainable. E. Kristin Anderson’s poetry shifts perspectives to retell legends, ghost stories, mythical creatures, and teenagers using a Parker Brothers Ouija board. In “Bermuda”, a poem about the namesake’s triangle, she writes:
The whistle of the ocean
ebbs into my ears, a requiem
for the sinking.
Whether or not you’re a sceptic, Anderson tells us in “Upon Discovering Crop Circles in Iowa”:
now it’s just me, the night sky, the hairs standing
on my arms as that little voice whispers, Believe.
A Guide for the Practical Abductee is a clever dive into the unknown— a creative reinvention of stories to be told bundled up around a bonfire.
A Guide to Strange Places by Kelly Magee is a collection of fictional short stories that personifies places, particularly cities such as Atlanta, Columbus, and Orlando. For example, after the first frost, the city of Columbus “patrols the street in her giant muumuu, her crabgrass slippers, the rollers in her hair like ice.” Each unique embodiment is both outlandish while somehow grounded in an intimate understanding of each place’s unique beating heart.
In the short story “Orlando Speaks to Jesus,” Orlando’s “voice is strained from swallowing all month: snowbirds and transients, retirees, immigrants; SUVs, mini-vans, tour buses, campers.” Jesus, who is on vacation there, eventually sees what’s underneath “its weeping sinkholes, its mossy underarms, its drained-swamp thighs.”
Not only does Magee masterfully embody theses cities, she creates peculiar storylines that entice us into a world where a house can witnesses a burglary, yet “lacks motor skills, you know. Opposable thumbs. But it can feel terror in its central cooling system.” Each short story in this collection brings to life a place in ways that bend the imagination, and spark curiosity.
unintentional guide to the big city by Lisa Higgs takes a deep dive into Chicago life, observing the “alchemy of a city, making sediment gold.” A reluctant resident strolls through the city streets with her young child observing “the heights, the heights. The rattle and honk. The thrum.”
This multi-chambered poem is pleasurably shaped into the Japanese poetic form haibun; each section begins with a prose poem and ends with a haiku, weaving in the inner and outer world of a singular moment.
What does it mean to have so much bound behind keycard and razor-wire,
fortified strongholds against paltry thefts, crueler crimes, all for want, for more, for
forget-it-all, bottled and pilled, illicit assaults, humanity all the more, all the more tucked
into pricey cars under guard keeping riffraff out. (vi.)
Inspired by Japanese haiku poets Matsuo Basho and Kobayashi Issa as well as the seasonal shift of the city of Chicago, the poem is carefully crafted in style, and grounded in setting. It moves through the seasons, and records the bustle, but also stops time to really tune into the senses and all that can be understood through observation.
leaves, concrete, leaves
vagrant woman’s echo
leaves concrete, leaves
Together, this buddle delights in its contrast of voice surrounding the unusual places we find ourselves. Take a look around. Afterall, it’s all about the journey, let us guide you there.
Purchase The Guide Bundle here.