The title poem was first published in Rattle on October 1, 2018. Read or listen to it here.
“WITH VERVE AND HUMOR, THIS MENAGERIE OF POEMS TELLS A STORY OF AN ‘OLD, OLD LOVE,’ THOUGH FAR FROM A FAMILIAR ONE.”
— John Gery, director, Ezra Pound Center for Literature
“SIMPSON’S POEMS ARE DRENCHED IN IMAGINATION, CREATIVELY CONNECTING US TO NATURE AND WOMANHOOD.”
— Yvonne Leach, Another Autumn
Choose Your Own Adventure and Other Poems invites you to take a journey through the many dimensions of womanhood as you explore– along with a few animal friends– ancient rituals of partnership, parenting, love, and separation.
In the style of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, a single American female vacations on a cruise in the Galápagos Islands. In each chapter, she tries on the mating rituals of a different animal, as she looks for the “perfect partnership pattern.” Accompanied by Simpson’s original watercolor illustrations, this collection will have you laughing out loud and pondering our animalistic journeys on this earth, only to discover that we still have some evolving left to do.
“In Caroline Simpson’s Choose Your Own Adventure, animals on the Galapagos do the mating dance, the body is a ‘carpet bag of residual flesh,’ and being pregnant is ‘primordial,’” writes Yvonne Higgins Leach, author of Another Autumn. “Through each carefully chosen image, we peer into a larger life experience and find ourselves changed forever.”
“Step over Darwin; step back, Ovid. Cunning, cheeky and smartly evolutionary—Choose Your Own Adventure and Other Poems is the quintessential little field guide (in verse) to our animal mating games (and other affairs of the heart and scent organs)”, says Katherine Durham Oldmixon, author of Water Signs, co-director of Poetry at Round Top, and editor for Tupelo Quarterly. “Choose to tuck this one gingerly – or tenderly, if you prefer – into your hip pocket, and off you go, adventurous spirit.”
“Caroline N. Simpson’s Choose Your Own Adventure and Other Poems delves into the world of instinct and intuition,” writes poet John Gery, author of Have at You Now!, and Director of the Ezra Pound Center for Literature. As we learn from the sassy array of mating rituals depicted in the collection’s title poem, we can ‘easily hop/ between adaptions,’ so by the end of this irreverent garland, like the ‘last corsage of scent’ left behind by a suitor, Simpson’s poems linger in your mind long after you finish.”
US $14.99 | pp 21 | ISBN: 978-1-63534-689-3
Caroline N. Simpson 