“Who is ‘the crone’ in Beth Gordon’s Alchemist or Arsonist? A deeply feeling, historied figure with magical associations—one who speaks with spiders, whose wants are ocean-large, who tangles her fingers into memory, desire, longing, the garden and side-car martinis, corner-slices of cake and murder documentaries. Who has lived. Who has flown. Who knows her teeth. Who invokes Hecate. Beth Gordon’s poems pull you into their life—their lives—with their nakedness, their fire, their wary tenderness, their skepticism of salvation. This collection glitters with a Promethean understanding of human life and experience; it takes the reader’s hand and runs with them ‘into the circle of mulberry trees like a bomb.’” 

Han VanderHart, author of Larks

“Like a saddle stitch through a spellbook, the prose poem’s long line is a unifying force in Beth Gordon’s untamed & unerring second collection. Alchemist or Arsonist dips deftly to & fro between verse & prose (‘“Angels We Have Heard on High” + “Folsom Prison Blues” in equal measure’) to give its histories of scars, all rich with images, lists, & wisdom. (See how many &s it takes to span the breadth of Gordon’s achievement?) The voice in these poems is sinewy, strong—good meat, marbled & dark, ‘spellbound with murk & myth.’ Few books are both expansive & intimate enough to be a second skin. This one is.”

Tom Snarsky, author of MOUNTEBANK

“In Alchemist or Arsonist, invisibility becomes a form of magic. The crone—older woman, mother, diabolical lover, witness, witch—moves through a world where the boundaries between memory and prophecy dissolve. ‘Never put your hand near her teeth,’ she instructs. ‘Collect her dreams in a jar like fireflies.’ Aging and loss here are not endings; they are alchemical forces, catalysts for surreal transformation and freedom. ‘I was running through the grass,’ the crone tells us. ‘I was running into the circle of mulberry trees like a bomb.’ With its incantatory music and wild associative intelligence, Alchemist or Arsonist is a book about what happens when a woman stops asking to be seen and discovers instead the power of seeing. Beth Gordon is a poet of incredible imagination and she writes with an urgency, skill, and velocity I can only sit back and admire.”

Kevin Prufer, author of The Fears