Swarm Queen's Crown

n Swarm Queen’s Crown, Adams-Santos—author of the shortbooks Total Memory (Finishing Line, 2016), Little Fugues (Sola Books, 2011), and The Sundering, which won a chapbook fellowship from the Poetry Society of American in 2009—deals majorly with self’s inherent Otherness. We are spun, Adams-Santos says, ‘in the veiled gore / of becoming.’ This ‘becoming’ seeks to know the creaturely, the animal; and to examine the loss and estrangement of being human alongside our abiding capacity to love. The poems wield a sacerdotal power that thwarts simple rational approach; Swarm Queen’s Crown is the longbook debut of a contemporary mystic. The volume features a cover image by British artist Darren Hopes, whose periodical credits include The Telegraph, New Scientist, Killzone, and the Washington Post; Hopes’ other clients include Houghtin Mifflin, The Folio Society, and Penguin. Joanna Klink calls Adams-Santos ‘heir to Roethke.’ She ‘There is a distinct, composed wildness to her voice . . . one famished and unafraid.’ Stephanie Adams-Santos is a Guatemalan-American poet and divination artist educated at Columbia University and Stanford. Among her magazine credits are Boston Review, Guernica, Gramma, The Bacon Review, and Orion.