WINDOWBOXING
Kirsten Kaschock

This sold-out chapbook is now available as a free ebook. Read or download the PDF here.

Windowboxing is also included in our 6-in-1 chapbook compilation, BOUND: The First Array.

Praise for Windowboxing: A Dance with Saints in Three Acts

“I am fascinated by the sentences in Kirsten Kaschock’s Windowboxing: A Dance with Saints in Three Acts (New Jersey: Bloof Books, 2013), a collection of short poems, each of which are constructed through a series of accumulations. Her sentences are sharp, and cut deep into bone, such as ‘History flattens. She can see out.’ from the poem ‘[WINDOWER],’ a piece on seeing through and seeing out, and striking at the differences between the two. The collection works through ideas of perception, of seeing, and of conflict through movements on gender, gender relation and gender perception. There is a violence throughout the collection, and a tension, as she writes to open the poem ‘[WINDOWNER]’: “’You would have my explosions be localized and armed against themselves. // You would prefer I not discuss men or women. The genres. // It would be better to prevent the spread of the insurgency.’ The collection wraps itself around the image of the window, framing a way of both seeing directly and through. The poem ‘[WINDOWRIGHT]’ opens: ‘Window, like woman, an invention. // Think caves. Invent: to welcome wind. To shun: unwelcome.’ Her title suggests a performance and a stage watching, instead of a series of characters or performers, a sequence of short poem-scenes, each as thick and descriptive as an essay. Kaschock’s poems explore the violence and confusions so often included between the genders, and the way gender is perceived, as one fixed idea clashes up against another opposing fixed idea.” —rob mclennan

“Kaschock is in possession of a very dry sense of humour that manifests in a love of high class wordplay. She is clearly fond of the surprises, word bombs going off, that can be found through connecting unrelated imagery, like 60s miniskirts and Volvos. Windowboxing charts a course towards a sense of identity and concern for gender issues that doesn’t allow itself to be reduced to transparencies or flat reductions of personality. Kaschock has produced a striking work that’s both dry and vibrant, earthed in theory and live in the practice of living.” —Simon Travers, Small Press Book Review