The Air around the ButterflyPublished August, 2009
Publisher: Fakel Express
ISBN: 978-954-9772-64-7
Size: 6.5" x 8.5", 147 pages
Price: $10.00
Katerina Stoykova-Klemer's first book, The Air around the Butterfly / Въздухът около пеперудата is a bilingual collection of poems, each of which appears side by side in both English and Bulgarian. Originally written in English, each work has been translated by the author into her native Bulgarian. The collection is comprised of three sections: My Mother Was Going to War, E.T. and I Phone Home, and The Apple Who Wanted to Become a Pinecone.
To purchase this book, please contact the author or visit Amazon.com.
Katerina Stoykova's "The Air around the Butterfly" is lapidary poetry, even ascetic, without excessive wordiness and stylization; poetry that intrinsically creates its own form, like an authentic confession peering into itself and into the world… Katerina Stoykova’s American poetry is also Bulgarian, not only because it is translated by its author into Bulgarian, but also because it introduces us to the artistic self-awareness of a new breed of Bulgarians.
- Prof. Svetlozar Igov
The MostPublished March, 2010
Publisher: Finishing Line Press
ISBN: 1-59924-534-5
Size: 5.4" x 8.5", 26 pages
Price: $12.00
Katerina's chapbook, The Most, contains 21 poems discussing overcoming obstacles, moving on and stepping with hope into the future.
To purchase this book, please contact the author or visit Finishing Line Press.
Katerina Stoykova-Klemer’s The Most is absolutely charming! Her chapbook debuts some of the most original, smart, engaging, and well-crafted poems I’ve read in years. Whether a poem that features the voice of a reluctant spare tire or Katerina’s “conversations,” witty epigrams that leave the reader in a marvel, this is all work of a poet who will, I have no doubt, make her mark on our literary world.- Kathleen Driskell, author of Seed Across Snow
Each of Katerina Stoykova-Klemer’s astonishing poems contains a piquant surprise. If the poem’s outer shell is funny, its startling pearl is edge-y. If the poem’s fruit is tragic, its pit is comic. Stoykova-Klemer’s brilliance lies in her unnerving sense of how to turn conclusions inside out. In The Most, her debut chapbook, she makes a wisdom of her questions and questions what we once assumed was wise, creating a new kind of poem-as-pensée that flourishes on buoyant, beguiling contradictions.- Molly Peacock, author of Second Blush
Katerina Stoykova-Klemer is a refreshing new voice in American poetry with echoes of Yugoslavian-American poet Charles Simic as well as her countryman, Bulgarian poet Konstatin Pavlov. Born in Bulgaria and writing in English, Stoykova-Klemer creates a way of speaking in The Most that allows her to make sense of unthinkable moments, such as a mother struggling with cancer or a boyfriend reporting to the draft board. Revealed through unusual personifications and surrealistic turns, there is great wisdom in these poems. Fierce and sure-footed, Stoykova-Klemer creates a personal schematic that personifies everyday abstract notions (“I’ve heard a lot about you / Worst Case Scenario”) as well as common objects (“The Spare Tire / Is constantly afraid / That one day / It will be his turn”) with equal precision. Seeing the world through Stoykova-Klemer’s most intelligent and unique lens, we know it more profoundly.- Jeanie Thompson, author of The Seasons Bear Us
Katerina Stoykova-Klemer knows how to get the most out of language. She sees the absurdities in our daily dramas and uses them to reveal the slanted truth. She can take two clichés and rub them together and make them shine. She has the skill and the wisdom to turn sadness into laughter and the integrity to keep us thinking in the silence that follows the poem. She writes with the charm of a magician who believes that real magic is possible.
- Greg Pape, Montana Poet Laureate, author of American Flamingo