A Sybil Society: Poems

by Katherine Factor

Overview

With fearless and playful language, Katherine Factor’s debut collection reveals agony, humor, and the necessary voices of the female oracle through time. The oracle’s message is apparent—she is not dead. Her words are cryptic but contemporary, offering caution along with guidance to a society interested only in using prophecy for profit.

In a time when only a select few are prosperous, A Sybil Society paints a portrait of the present moment and unveils a restless truth. The collection is fearless in the face of convention and gives readers a sense of devastating sorrow in a world gone mad.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647790417
Publisher:	University of Nevada Press
Publication date:	01/17/2022
Series:	Test Site Poetry Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	761 KB

About the Author

Katherine Factor is an editor, book coach, and author. She has her MFA in Poetry from The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has held positions at Idyllwild Arts Academy and Interlochen Arts Academy. She is a recipient of grants from the Iowa Arts Council and the Arts Enterprise Laboratory for supporting projects publishing young writers. Her poems and audio work can be found at Interim, The Conversant, Quarterly West, Poets for Living Waters, The Equalizer, DIAGRAM, Colorado Review, Coldfront’s Poets off Poetry, and on WFMU and textsound.org.

Table of Contents

Contents

Aurora

@ the Last Venue

When Medicine Comes for Us

White Goddess House

A Sybil Society

An Ariadne

Delphi Selfie

The Virus About Us

Tripod Lockdown

Antediluvian Floozy

The Pythia Proudly Has ADHD

When the General Arrives w/His Ask

Make Love Not Wall

Shhh @ the Temple of Inscriptions

The Age of Nefarious

Queen of the Night

Mycenae, Founded by Fungi

Poly Colony

Pleasure Centaur

Vestals Hack the Passcode

The Feisty Disc Discovery

New Dating Technique

Mistress of Honey

How a Bill Originates in Vulvic Space

Animous Uni State

Lady with a Lamp

We All Need a Death Doula

Elegy for a Satyr

Fancy Necromancy

Dollar Goddess

Helmet Dressing Room

How to Haul a Parasol

Whistle Blow Her

Joan d’Arc

Soggy Augury

Labyrinth in Sync

HMU @ Emerald Tablets

WTF @ the Library of Alexandria

Duende Friending

Pythia LOL

W*i*T*C*h Please

Pentheus the Unelected

Aliens, Do Arrive Pronto

Rock on Parnassos

The Pythia’s Final Prophecy

Self-Love

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

“Factor’s is a poetry that strikes with the speed and charge of lightning. Ping, sting, and tingle. Afterward, a “flush and flow.” Yo, goddesses, witches, and sisters—behold, Katherine Factor’s poetic effort to rematriate!” — Jami Macarty, NewPages Blog

“In A Sybil Society, Katherine Factor has made a new prosody, using urban slang, internet shorthand, and all the variations of American English in the twenty-first century, a system of new sound that refuses easy epiphany, offering instead a twisting language, mad speaker, and always original address to try to reach us, here, on what’s left of our earth.”

—Ronaldo V. Wilson, member of the Test Site Poetry Advisory Board, author of several poetry collections, and winner of the Pushcart Prize

 

“Yes, I want to morph exploitive logics into deep fungal punster connectedness. Here comes A Sibyl Society. Rampaging, delicate, muscular, hilarious oracle, please tell us what to do!”

—Catherine Wagner, author of Of Course 

 

“Throughout this marvelously sparkly, quick-witted collection, sound leads the mind, mining rhyme, echo, pun, and any number of other verbal gymnastics. Tone leads, too; a rather sassy contemporaneity reigns—it’s delightful and incredibly smart. If you’re looking for the oracular, this Sybil is, per tradition, utterly cryptic, and yet her take on the future feels firm. And firmly rooted in the magic of language; as Factor says, “Best to let the alphabet / sail in.”

—Cole Swensen, author of Art in Time

 

From the Publisher