Guide to Urban Reindeer
Essay Press, Groundloop Series, 2017
Guide to Urban Reindeer is a lyric prose sequence, an excerpt from a longer project that responds to photographs from the construction of the Alaska Railroad during the 1910s. Part ekphrasis and part archive, this project layers the federal experiments of settler life and agriculture in the North against life in contemporary Anchorage. The essay’s scope pulls in baby beauty contests and Alaskan carrots, as well as soundscapes and engineering. Of course, there is also a celebrity reindeer.
Excerpt:
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“49. In private photos, the ingenuity of individuals takes center stage. Someone has built a baby sled out of a tea crate and an umbrella. Men have put up roadhouses along the route. A husky appears as a pack animal, carrying a sack, pails, and a frying pan strapped over his back and sides. His expression indicates complete seriousness regarding the task.”
Intended American Dictionary
MIEL Books, 2016
"Like her literary paramour, Walt Whitman—Partridge addresses us, too, in every line that she puts together. Intended American Dictionary is a love letter, a reading of Whitman’s poetics, a wry meditation on the history of phrenology in the United States, and a lexicon of desire." — Srikanth Reddy
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"What happens when phrenology crosses poetry? If measuring what is inside can determine the outside, what does it mean to put one thing beside the other? So goes the inquiry of Kate Partridge’s fascinating Intended American Dictionary, a cross-genre text that records the experience of reading Leaves of Grass while taking into account Whitman’s fascination with phrenology. From “Hope” to “Viscera” these definitions are written to veer, to blend humor and fact, to cross the personal with the researched. What a joy to be lost in these thoughts, left wondering: What good is symmetry? Will I ever be what I am meant to be? How might this even matter?" — Sally Keith