Toxicon and Arachne
In Toxicon & Arachne, McSweeney allows the lyric to course through her like a toxin producing a quiver of lyrics like poisoned arrows. Toxicon was written in anticipation of the birth of McSweeney's daughter, Arachne. But when Arachne was born sick, lived briefly, and then died, McSweeney unexpectedly endured a second inundation of lyricism, this time spun with grief. Toxicon & Arachne is the culmination of ten years of engagement with lyric under a regime of global and personal catastrophes.
Joyelle McSweeney is the author of eight genre-crossing books, from her debut volume The Red Bird which inaugurated the Fence Modern Poets Series in 2002 to her influential work of Decadent ecopoetics, The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults in 2015. She has written lyric prose, verse plays, Gothic tales and absurdist farces and is interested in hyperdiction, anachronism, and the uncanny prerogatives of Sound and Art, including the political force of non-compliance in all its manifestations. With Johannes Göransson, she founded the internationalist press Action Books and teaches at the MFA program at Notre Dame. She lives in South Bend, Indiana.
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