The End of Pink

Winner of the 2015 James Laughlin Award, Kathryn Nuernberger''s The End of Pink is populated by strange charactersBat Boy, automatons, taxidermied mermaids, snake oil salesmen, and Benjamin Franklinall from the annals of science and pseudoscience. Equal parts fact and folklore, these poems look to the marvelous and the weird for a way to understand childbirth, parenthood, sickness, death, andof coursejoy.Finding myself in a mesmeric orientation,before me appeared Benjamin Franklin,who magnetized his French paramoursat dinner parties as an amusing diversionfrom his most serious studies of electricityand the ethereal fire. I like thinking abouthow he would have stood on tiptoe to kisstheir buzzing lips and everyone would gaspand clap for the blue spark between them.I believe in an honest and forthright manner,a democracy of plain speech, so I have tofind a way to explain I don''t care to have sexanymore.Kathryn Nuernberger has lived in various corners of Missouri, Louisiana, Ohio, and Montana. Her first book, Rag & Bone (Elixir Press, 2011), was a love letter to backwoods junk collectors and all of the abandoned cabins in the foothills to the Ozark Mountains. An unapologetic dilettante, she has received research fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society and The Bakken Museum of Electricity in Life to research aspects of the history of science and medicine. She currently lives in Columbia, Missouri, teaches at the University of Central Missouri, and serves as the director of Pleiades Press.