Augury once referred only to the form of divination that read birds, futures read from the types and flight and behavior of birds. It was a kind of literacy. Now augury means future-telling in general. Of course, the thing about the future is that we know, broadly, what is happening. The circulation of the Atlantic ocean nears a tipping point where the currents will stop, wildfires in California, in Turkey, heatwaves in south Asia. It’s pretty clear what’s happening. So telling the future is an obsolescing industry, and as such, poetry can get in there. SEX AUGURY (Red Hen Press, 2023) is the second book of poetry by writer and performance artist C. Bain, applying a mystical literacy to the saturation of image, violence, and erotic alienation we are surrounded with, and infiltrated by. Just before the launch of SEX AUGURY, C. began a Fulbright fellowship in Leipzig, rendering the book launch a bit muted. On the belated occasion of the book, Rosemary Carroll, a colleague of C.’s through the brotherhood of negative prophesy, interviewed C. about the book and creative process.
