How does one advance on Katie Fowley's The Supposed Huntsman? By praise for a way of advancing called supposing that comes preternaturally to the most tender and lush of poetic guides, that is, The Supposed Huntsman. Supposing is an act of the whole body taking the whole body—taking one's place—with a flirt of hesitation. "Suppose I am a huntsman. / Suppose I am possessed by a lion. / Suppose I am rude and disoriented at my wedding." Fowley's flicker of only "supposing" what she is or might be, is devotion, daring and doubting at its most human and wise—like a fool sliding off of Shakespeare's tongue, over and over, to love this world—because the sufferings are enormous, because of the enormous integrity and grace required to enrhythm and incorporate all its peacock-plumed and plucked forms, all its terrible ripples of compassion—the endless buts and rebuttals of the mind contradicting—Dance, damn dust!—and all that it takes to resound, through and through, with the conviction Fowley does—We'll make it lush.

Farnoosh Fathi

There’s a hint of Scottish border ballad tradition in Katie Fowley’s poetry—it’s sexy, provocative, haunting, and written with an insistence we need to dance, preferably unclothed and accompanied by other creatures. Her work foments a revolution against the constructed borders we too often accept as real. It’s a subtle joyful revolution, balanced between the poles of imagination and techne, a place to wander, to get lost, and to stay lost, happily.

Lisa Jarnot

'Suppose I am possessed by a lion./ …Suppose I possess a lion./ … Suppose a lion possesses itself," writes Katie Fowley in the title poem of The Supposed Huntsman, and I then realize I’ve been waiting for this book for what now feels like eternity. With its clean lines and searing grace, moments completely submerged in holy repetition, it is a book that gives me reason again for hope. It is a book that is unafraid to charm the reader with language broken with pain and jubilation, with moments where the persona “woke up like this/ in the wet sun,” lives within “the frost we steer ourselves to,” and “happily” finds “The Joy/ of the Heart.” In all of these ways, The Supposed Huntsman offers a redemptive glaze over life—it soothes the soul of the reader into believing in beauty once again. “How to find a direct emotion?” this book asks itself. And then it finally answers: "Tap it at the root./ Sordid root.'

Dorothea Lasky

Katie Fowley reads from The Supposed Huntsman as part of the Segue Reading Series

Last Dance or The Festival of St. John (trailer for The Supposed Huntsman)

Katie Fowley reads at the Greetings Reading Series

“Teacher-Creature” by Katie Fowley in the Columbia Journal

“Lullaby” by Katie Fowley on Augury Books

ISBN: 978-1-946433-81-7
Trade Paperback
Trade Paperback. 88 pp, 5 x 8 in
Publication Date: March 01 2021
Distribution: Asterism Books (US), Inpress Books (UK)