Alabama Steve

by Karyna McGlynn

McGlynn’s anonymous speaker inhabits a paracosmic fantasyland where date-raping praying mantises become gay flight attendants, Beowulf rides a chopper through Canada and skull-licking is common practice among the academic elite.

Our protagonist finds herself adrift amidst a panoply of Steves who
both mirror and deflect the title’s anti-hero. Despite bifurcations of class, fame and intelligence, each Steve can be distilled to an essence we instinctively recognize as the Steveness inherent in all of us. Steve’s world, while endlessly re-forming, exhibits an authority that makes these stories both addictively escapist and disturbingly believable.

Alabama Steve is available exclusively through the Destructible Heart Store (destructibleheart.com) or the author.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

60 pages, saddle-stitched

First published May 1, 2008

About the author

Karyna McGlynn is the author of Hothouse (Sarabande Books 2017), I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Sarabande Books 2009), and several chapbooks. Her poems have recently appeared in The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Black Warrior Review, Ninth Letter, Georgia Review, Witness, and The Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day. Karyna holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan, and earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston where she served as Managing Editor for Gulf Coast. Her honors include the Verlaine Prize, the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, the Hopwood Award, and the Diane Middlebrook Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Wisconsin. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Oberlin College, where she teaches poetry, translation, and humor writing. Find her online at www.karynamcglynn.com.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laughed very much. Wonderful not-not-poetry.
This is available as a free e-chap from Sundress Publications! Google it.

[Karyna McGlynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, sure, I wrote this, but I sill totally dig it; it tickles me immensely and makes me all squirmy with enjoyment when I read it out loud. Besides, I wouldn't give any of my other chapbooks 5 stars.

It's not really "poetry" per se. Or, rather, it's poetry for people who don't like poetry. I hope people get the same sort of use out of this book that I did from Jennifer L. Knox's A Gringo Like Me when I made a bunch of German tourists at a bar read "Hot Ass Poem" aloud.

Alan Bajandas described the narrator of Alabama Steve as "an excitable gay 12 year-old gangster trying to mingle at the National Book Awards." I think that's pretty accurate.

If that sounds like fun to you, I have copies for sale and for trade!

[Juliet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yup, this was a yummy read.

Some pieces worked better for me than others, but overall a snazzily designed tome with wunderbar innards.

I even recommended it to some people at a bar last evening, but apparently none of them liked poetry.

***

Loving this so much it's making me jealous.

It's fun, weird, and wildly almost outrageously imaginative in a uniquely zeitgeisty kind of way.

[Wendell Mckay · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the Prophet Isaiah "pegged" Sylvia Plath and had the resulting screams of passion set to music by .38 Special, it might sound a lot like "Alabama Steve"... or not, especially since putting disparate writers, musicians or filmmakers in bizarre, cutesy situations in an attempt to describe another's work is one of the lamest critical cliches in the repertoire. That said, "Steve" is tremendous fun, a series of poetically-told stories (or prosaically-rendered poems) describing the various exploits of the eponymous redneck paladin and his long-suffering chronicler/ friend/lover/enemy. Steve alternately reminds me of the gas station attendant in a classic "Beavis and Butthead" episode where the boys tried to buy gasoline just for the hell of it (you had to be there)--"Sorry, dudes, you can't buy gas unless you've got a container"--and this guy who used to live across the street when I was a kid and fire off his shotgun in the backyard for no apparent reason. In his present incarnation, Steve acts as the ultimate avatar of American maleness (pace Donal Logue in 2000's "The Tao of Steve") and comes to blows with various other Steves (and other poetic Roberts as well--namely Lowell and Browning) in his determination to make the entire psychic poetic cosmos smell of malt liquor. Even (especially) if you're not particularly into poetry, "Steve" is a grand read and will make for a hilarious stretch of time.

[Becky Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a delight and challenge to read. It's not the style I usually gravitate toward -- it's more edgy, experimental. It's probably more flash fiction than poetry. I found it to be a rewarding read, and once I explored some of the references and nuances it was an amazingly dense little encyclopedia, under the covers. My review of this poetry/prose chapbook is published online at RATTLE: http://www.rattle.com/blog/2009/01/al...

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure why these are poems, rather than a cycle of flash fiction, but I'm also not sure I care. This book is pretty wonderful. By the author of I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl.

[Rusty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is some fun shit. I'd love to hear some of these at a reading.

[Philip Jenks · Rating 5 out of 5]

hilarity, gut me. gut. all the better. o alabama steve. karyna McGlynn thank you.