A Guide for the Practical Abductee

by E. Kristin Anderson

A GUIDE FOR THE PRACTICAL ABDUCTEE is a short chapbook of poems on the topic of the unknown — cryptozoology, ufology, and paranormal phenomena. From ouija boards to Sasquatch to the Bermuda Triangle and crop circles, these poems explore the nature of humanity from a whole new angle.

Praise for A GUIDE FOR THE PRACTICAL ABDUCTEE:

In GUIDE FOR THE PRACTICAL ABDUCTEE, Anderson leaps into an array of narrative personas with an actor's gusto --even once writing from the point of view of an animal. These are special, biting poems, written with salty/sweet relatability; who hasn't felt that they are "a traffic light set on yellow forever"?
It may be no accident that the animal she chooses to inhabit is a unicorn.
-- Kirsten Smith, author of Trinkets and screenwriter of 10 Things I Hate About You.

Cryptozoology poetry found its way to me, thanks to E. Kristin Anderson. I now know the study of Sasquatch, Nessie and Champ has joined the realm of lonely hearts, missed dreams, and love lost. It was bound to happen, I'm happy to say. Thank you, Kristin.
-- Loren Coleman, director, International Cryptozoology Museum, and author of over 30 books, including Cryptozoology A to Z.

Otherworldly and addictively odd, the poems in A Guide for the Practical Abductee offer insight into the obsessive human need to rely on legends, magic, and mystery. Deftly switching between powerful narrative voices, E. Kristin Anderson reveals the truth behind the strong need for stories. Smart, peculiar, and devastatingly honest, Anderson’s poems celebrate the unexplainable dark and the desire that lurks there.
-- Ada Limón, author of Lucky Wreck and Sharks in the Rivers.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published June 1, 2014

About the author

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College graduate with a B.A. in classics, Kristin’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Kristin co-edited the award-winning DEAR TEEN ME anthology and is the editor of the literary anthology COME AS YOU ARE, an anthology of writing on 90’s pop culture (Anomalous Press). Kristin’s poetry and flash fiction have appeared in The Texas Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Puerto del Sol, The Pinch, Barrelhouse Online, Cotton Xenomorph and FreezeRay Poetry and she has work forthcoming in Birdfeast, Entropy, and Harpur Palate. Kristin is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including A GUIDE FOR THE PRACTICAL ABDUCTEE (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), PRAY, PRAY, PRAY: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015), FIRE IN THE SKY (Grey Book Press, 2016), SHE WITNESSES (dancing girl press, 2016), WE’RE DOING WITCHCRAFT (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2016), 17 SEVENTEEN XVII (Grey Book Press, 2017) and BEHIND, ALL YOU’VE GOT (Semiperfect Press). She hand-wrote her first trunk book at sixteen. It was about the band Hanson and may or may not still be in a notebook in her parents’ garage. Kristin is a poetry reader at Cotton Xenomorph and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. She blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and tweets at @ek_anderson.

Reviews

[E. Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm the author, so I might be biased, but I think this book is great. :)

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received A Guide for the Practical Abductee in a goodreads giveaway. Thank you E. Kristen Anderson for sending me a beautiful signed copy!

Let me first start out by saying poetry is not a genre I normally read. My experience with poetry is limited to Shel Silverstein and whatever boring poems my English teachers have made me read. That being said, I enjoyed A Guide for the Practical Abductee.

A Guide for the Practical Abductee is a collection of 17 wonderfully written narrative poems that explore the magical, mythical, and supernatural. Everything from Sasquatch to ghosts to crop circles. My personal favorite out of the bunch was a poem with the title: Unicorn in Central Park. The cool thing about this poem was that it was told from the unicorn's perspective. The poem tells the story of a unicorn that came to New York City to be a workhorse because it heard the city was magic. I love New York City and it had always felt like a magical place to me which is probably why I enjoyed this specific poem so much.

All of the poems in this book are fairly short, with most of them only taking up a single page. They are all typed with black ink on bright white paper. I like how the book and the poems are all set up in such a simple and neat way. My favorite part of the book itself is probably the cover. I absolutely love the art that was chosen for it as well as the style of font that was used for the title.

Overall, I enjoyed A Guide for the Practical Abductee and would recommend it for teens who like fantasy or science-fiction and are interested in poetry.

Too bad we don't get to read poetry like this in English class!

[DivaDiane SM · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore this little chapbook. It's been nominated for the Elgin Award and I'll be reviewing it in Star*Line and Amazing Stories in the fullness of time.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won a copy of this very attractive chapbook from the Gooodreads Firstreads giveaway program. It's a very slim volume of seventeen poems, printed on paper of excellent quality with a very nice folded cover on heavy stock stitched on, which illustrates a traditional UFO in the night sky. The poems are all about topics on the fringe of accepted reality, and run the gamut from the Bermuda triangle to Sasquatch, Ouija boards to unicorns, and all stops in between. They illustrate the importance of dreams and imagination and the willingness (or need) to suspend disbelief from time to time. Many are told from the point of view of the creature in question, very effectively for example in Unicorn in Central Park, where the unicorn discusses magic, and in Ouija Board: "As if being dead affords me any knowledge at all." My two favorites are A Voice at the Notre Dame Cathedral, narrated by a gargoyle, and Upon Discovering Crop Circles in Iowa: "The news crew is gone; now it's just me, the night sky, the hairs standing on my arms as that little voice whispers, -Believe.-" A book like this, I think, runs the risk of being silly or childish if it isn't very well executed, but I thoroughly enjoyed it; it will be a good companion for a late night re-reading with an old Moody Blues album playing softly in the background.

[Mary Soon Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Elgin-nominated chapbook contains seventeen poems of a paranormal persuasion: ghosts, cryptids, the Bermuda Triangle. Perhaps these would have appealed to me more had I not read the book on the heels of Allie Marini's "Southern Cryptozoology: A Field Guide to Beasts of the Southern Wild." Both chapbooks cover similar territory, but I found Allie Marini's poems more moving and more powerful. That said, I liked several of the poems, my favorites being "The Sasquatch" and "Upon Discovering Crop Circles in Iowa." The latter poem contains the fine stanza:

    In daylight, there is no fear -- only glory,
breathless.      My brother took me out in his glider
    to look down     and see the stars,     the planets,
        how they aligned right into my earth.

I wasn't initially familiar with some of the topics, including the Leeds baby, Flight 19, el chupacabra, and Chessie. This probably reflects the fact that I am not the right audience for these poems. Take my opinion with a pinch of salt. Other reviewers have been much more enthusiastic. (Maybe they hadn't recently read "Southern Cryptozoology"!)

[Schuyler Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

These lovely, haunting poems explore the nature of the paranormal, the unexplained--questioning the "fiction" in the term "science fiction." Each supernatural voice--from that of a poltergeist, to a spirit summoned by Ouija Board, to a unicorn--is so visceral, so tangible, our hearts are pulled toward the humanness of what some might term "monstrous." Other poems, from the point of view of humans, search within after encountering these beings. Are they real, the humans ask themselves, as real as me? Is it an essential truth that every creature, regardless of its nature, yearns to be seen, believed, understood? "Here is humanity," the poet writes. And so, after reading this collection, I believe.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my copy Anderson inscribed "I dare you to believe" and indeed each poem is a dare to face our fears and to embrace our wonder, to believe in something more than what we are told is real.

[Christina M Rau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Filled with oddities and mysteries, this collection craftily spills open with sensory images and intriguing structures. So good.