Fabulosa
Karen Rigby writes with "fingers cocked like a gun." Deliciously inventive in its linguistic unfurlings, Fabulosa fibrillates with "noir and glitz" in these strange, seductive poems that are in conversation with a range of players from Dior to Endeavour Morse to Hieronymus Bosch. Shimmering with diamond-cut precision, Fabulosa underscores Rigby's observation that "I never write / without measuring, each line / hooking a quicksilver hunger." There is no bloat in this book; it is exquisitely hewn. Underpinning the collection is a keen interest in cinema, fashion, feminism, transformation, and textuality (from ars poeticas to portmanteaus to ekphrastics). Seamed with goldshine and darkness, we find in these fireball poems a "wilderness / glanced through the bull's eye." As the title suggests, Fabulosa is indeed absolutely fabulous! -Simone Muench
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Born in the Republic of Panama, Karen Rigby is the author of two collections of poetry, Chinoiserie (Ahsahta Press, 2012) and Fabulosa (JackLeg, 2024). Her awards include the 2011 Sawtooth Poetry Prize for Chinoiserie and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals, including Poetry Northwest, The London Magazine, and Bennington Review. She lives in Arizona. www.karenrigby.com
Yes, Fabulosa: where "poems arrive wearing black gloves," then "jump speed rope," "refuse daylight," and "end on fire." Here, couture rhymes with futur because these poems know why Dior's "wasp-waist" and the Doomsday clock debut together. Karen Rigby reminds us that whether writing or reading a poem, we are "doing what history warns us / not to, inserting myself // in the frame." Wear black gloves, jump speed rope: read these poems and find how "the brute song housed / in the chest finds a way out."
-Angie Estes
Karen Rigby's lush, restless poems somersault dazzlingly between the world's myriad surfaces and the shadowy interiors of heart and mind. In Fabulosa, her gorgeous second collection, Rigby's voracious intelligence snares on everything from an Oscar dress to police procedurals to bougainvillea ramping over a chain link fence. I'm in awe of these poems, already possessed of such knowledge yet always hungry for more.
-Kasey Jueds
Enter Fabulosa as you would step into a film noir, with fascination and apprehension. In Karen Rigby's extraordinary new book, poems wear a "river of black beads // down a backwards V-dress." They peel down black evening gloves and "hunt shadow in the folds." They smell of lemons in the desert and "new blood." These poems blaze with history and private anguish against a twilight backdrop. You leave Fabulosa feeling like a jewel thief who has pulled off the crime of the century. A victory of deftly executed spins and fistfuls of diamonds.
-Sharon Suzuki-Martinez
