Cline, Ashley: Electric Infinities

Variant Literature Inc, paperback

Publication Date: February 10, 2023

Publisher Marketing: The end of the world is not always quite as lonely as we think.

"In a voice both honeyed yet unsparing, Ashley Cline's electric infinities leads us to the end of the world. Uninterested in offering platitudes to those seeking solid ground on a planet of such uncertain terrain, Cline instead makes a gift of companionship, a promise that 'we'll slow dance in/to / the end.' Amongst the burnings and guttings of an ever-looming apocalypse, Cline grants readers reprieve in a landscape of wildflowers and feral gardens, bites of summer peaches and sips of dandelion wine. Here, even in death, bodies become sites of possibility. Even at the end of everything, Cline makes space for the 'perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.' One finds, in these poems, not the weak pulse of a fading heart but a determination 'to bring the color back to earth.'"--Katrina Smolinsky

"The poems in electric infinities 'spiral like miniature galaxies' and suck you in with their gravitational pull. Which is to say, Ashley Cline's work is a punch to the gut. Not from a fist, but from a fiery comet on a mission to destroy everything. After devouring this concise collection, I felt like someone knocked the wind out of me. But then I read it again, and the poems gifted me with the will to breathe."--Adam Gianforcaro, author of Every Living Day (Thirty West Publishing House, 2023)

"At first and second and third meeting, Ashley Cline's electric infinities sparks in your fingertips. A field guide for the end of the world, Cline comments on the slow destruction of our planet while emphasizing the importance of room for care, the self, future dreams. electric infinities is anchored in realization of honeybees, sung melodies, birthday smoke. This book makes you contemplate the promise of the individual world we see together. Cline expertly builds a space of precarious wildness to remind you: we are fragile incarnate. And yet, despite this, we are a letter to infinity, chosen again & again. Fireproof."--Madeleine Corley, Poet, Editor, Songwriter

"In electric infinities, Ashley Cline writes poems that wonder: about what will be left at the end of the world, and what's worth keeping. With utmost care, Cline's poems seek to illuminate the loneliness at the end by showing us all-of-the-enough we were all along."--Elizabeth Deanna Morris Lakes, author of Ashley Sugarnotch & the Wolf (Mason Jar Press, 2020)