"The Structure of a Flower: Stem" by Andrea Rexilius

Today’s fascination is a poem by Andrea Rexilius. I found it in her poetry chapbook, Afterworld, published by Above/ground Press in Spring 2020. You can purchase a copy online. I’m sharing the text as it appears in the chapbook itself.

A title creates an expectation—it tells us what to expect from the poem. The title tells us that the poem will be about that structural part of a flower known as a stem. Notice that the poem is not analyzing the structure of a plant or a tree but of a flower—the flower is centered, the stem’s relationship to the flower is structural. This is what we are given from the outset.

And what we do know? We know the stem is the part which holds the flower-head aloft or connects the bloom to the ground, its source of nourishment. In some cases, the flower is also the vessel of fertilization which enables new flowers to be born.

But the poem does not begin with a flower or a stem or a stalk. The poem begins in a very specific moment—”the day the deer died”—and the poet’s first-person voice emerges in the space around this external death event which occurred in the world. The past tense of the poem begins with this pressure it puts on the present. We realize that the title is not going to play a descriptive role in this poem. And so we are left to wonder how this will work, and what the poet wants to subvert or re-imagine.

“I was alive in my house.” Period.

That period holds us back for a split second before the repetition creates a new sense of motion that pushes us forward, that qualifies what being alive in her house meant.

“I was alive in a watery field / of glaciers.” I love the use of repetition here, as if to thicken the onion layers, to both wrap and unwrap a globe around the speaker. The house changes to become a melting world, another grief, a silence which is someone liquid—and both coalesce in the speaker’s throat in this “realm of birchwood”, a surreal metaphor. The world inside the throat maps onto the outside world in a way that creates suspense.

The poet is describing a moment in the past and yet grappling with her presence in that moment. She will do this again. Several lines begin with “I was”. And there is a subtle and marvelous thing happening in my mind as I read the “I was alive” statements placed near the wildfires, the deer dying, the time before trees, the changing interior and exterior conditions; I am wondering what it means to be alive, or what it signifies to continue living in a circumstance where the words used to describe my condition, namely alive-ness, are not modified by surrounding circumstances.

The death of a deer becomes plural. The fires are no longer the work of imagination but the reality of a landscape. There is no border between being and having been.

And yet I am here, silent. I am reading a poem about stems which has become a poem about connections and borders which has become a condition involving water and silence in my throat. I am wondering what Andrea Rexilius wants from me as she continues this pattern of retracting and qualifying statements in a way that both undermines and develops them. It’s not a dialectic motion so much as seasonal one. It’s less systemic than loosely-plotted in a form of anticipated variance. I love the climate inside this poem, or the way that it’s motion creates a sense of climate rather than climax. But it is heavy.

It is heavier than the silence after a eulogy. It is hard to carry because, like many silences, it remains expectant. It wants words to fix, explain, and pour over. And all of this world-building or world-destroying happens in the first stanza.

How does Andrea give this poem such a strong sense of motion? Notice that there are three stanzas, that we are led to believe this will be a poem about stems, and that certain words & images are carried over from the previous stanza.

In the first stanza, we find “the realm of birchwood” in the her throat, and the stanza ends by qualifying this, by making it clear that the birchwood is on fire, and the fire is “lodged” in her “throat”, and it is making a hissing sound that fire makes which cannot be described as human. The outside world is drawn inside the poet’s throat into the space of speaking. We use our words to make sense. We use our voice to express the sense we make of an experience. We use our words to shout “Fire!” but the poet is not shouting Fire!—the poet is making the sound of wet wood burning, hissing.

Why do fires hiss? The sound comes from water being turned to vapor (or steam), and then being pushed out of the material under pressure. This pressure is “lodged", or living, in the speaker. It is a sound in lieu of words. It is also a form of silence, if we understand silence to be a space of unspoken things, or things we don’t discuss. But the hissing is important. Dead wood doesn’t hiss—it crackles. The hissing sound in the poet’s throat is the sound of living wood, or wood that holds water, burning. It is the sound of water leaving a living body.

The second stanza begins with an assertion: “There is no difference between the damsel and the savior.” I re-read that a few times for its blunt dismounting of saviors. The poet brings back the drought, this time as a “silence / resourced.” The line break after silence startled me a little; we already know that drought and silence are related, so when this word resourced appears, it thickens things. There is a tension inside the word resourced—in the idea of a source or origin being used again, in a motion that involves returning, and in the noun form of resource which is associated with mining and extraction industries.

The poet never mentions mining. She never says the phrase natural resource, and yet it insinuates itself somehow. There is the stem’s relationship to water—and the water centered in the poet’s body, in the speechless throat, in the life of the plant as well as the planet. There are no clear lines or boundaries to separate these sources of life from their resourcefulness or their absence.

And the third stanza returns with the same words, rubbing them harder, making small fires of the friction between their given meanings, the meanings acquired in previous stanzas, and how the poet expands them. The “damsel’s nightgown” is the night sky, the water is an ocean, the savior is what is “rooted.” The connection to the title is an opening, an extended metaphor that is modified in each stanza, and the closest we come to resolution is in the last line, which begins with an assertive “Only”, which feels insistent, and leaves us with a word, sanctum. This is an old Latin word whose meaning has thickened over time; it comes from the Latin, neuter of sanctus ‘holy’, from sancire ‘consecrate’.. It is a meaning-full world. It designates a sacred place, especially a shrine within a temple or church. It is also used to refer to a private place from which most people are excluded. It is a bounded word, a word that creates boundaries in its association with sacredness. But sanctum also refers to a refuge, a retreat, a safe place where one cannot be harmed.

What is the place of rest? We return to the flower parts—the root, the stem, the structure. The poet is not finished; an uncertainty is implicit in this Afterworld she is trying to imagine or to survive. I think we see a deep structural criticism in this poem as well as the book. I think Andrea Rexilius is trying to find boundaries, to look at parts, to discern responsibility and function when the borders of harm do not exist.

Eleven poetry writing prompts for pandemiacs

1.

From Venezuelan poet Natasha Tiniacos: "What is the body in the digital world...there is touching the screen of the computer to grasp the other one, the loved one, the missing one.... Is our online presence making us feel less or differently? Write about that.... Is a selfie autobiographical? Why don't you try to write a poem instead of taking a selfie, or take your selfie and make a translation in poetry? Ask yourself this: Is a selfie a projection of a person we want to be?"

2.

From Bob Hicok’s note for Best American Poetry 2010: "....there's a bacteria that eats plutonium. This amazes me, but I've never recovered from either the pinwheel or the whirligig. How they spin. How I spin. How every atom spins." A self-portrait with a particular bacteria. Or a portrait of the self as a particular bacteria with details about that bacteria’s existential dilemmas.

3.

A secret word, a favorite. And then a poem which dances around this word without ever disclosing it so that formally, for example, any end rhymes would rhyme with the word you can’t write. The withheld word poem.

4.

I remember that weightless summer after 1989 spent wandering around Europe with feta-cheese sandwiches and Romanian-speaking parents. I remember the first time I realized I could choose whether to present myself as an American or a Romanian to strangers in Paris. Identity could be renounced or re-programmed at will, hence the kindness of strangers who agree to play along with the presentation.

A poem about a part of your identity that feels slippery, that lacks roots in belonging, and maybe set this in childhood or a moment when you realized this. For example, being a Braves fan when visiting family in Georgia. Poem from the innocence rather than the fury that came later, the fury of never being anyone, of always being insufficient or half.

5.

From D.H. Lawrence’s Women In Love: “And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.”

An epistolary poem to Lawrence that flips the metaphor and makes him the horse. Ride that metaphor into the ground.

6.

From Dan Beach-Quick: “Two types of poems (among many others): those whose lines build one on top of another as if to build into a tower (Kafka: the Tower of Babel would have been allowed if one did not need to ascend it in order to build it), and those that in every line dig down (Thoreau: My head is an organ for burrowing). No poem simply flat in the page; there are dimensions, expansions, progressions.”

Pick a subject, anything, a local gas station, a bench at the park, a favorite yogurt, and write a poem about it, a sketch. Make two versions: one a tower and the other a tunnel. Then read other draft poems and see if they are moving in the wrong direction or dimension. Run a little dimensionality check on drafts.

7.

From C.D. Wright’s personal instructional on compound words: “Although I take a special pleasure in compounds, whether or not they have been duly authorized: silverback, deepstep, lovegreen, pothead, eyestring, closeburn, shirttail, boneman, wristwatch, no words please me so much as the one or two-syllable noun. It appears at its best left unaccompanied by an article. At its best, shed of adjective.

A poem titled after an unduly authorized compound word that you want to explore. You can pull a Celanian twist and hyphenate the word (see “breath-turn”) to thicken it’s resonance in a way that refuses to be unpacked, or you can unpack the created compound in the poem itself.

8.

The subject of a scientific case study is unique and therefore not replicable. The study must include enough detail to document observations that enable other researchers to draw conclusions. A poem in the form of a case study.

9.

Joan Didion’s essay on notebooks alternates a passage from her notebook with explanation of her original motives for noting it. In this sense, she annotates herself. Annotations consist of explanatory notes. To annotate one's self is a dialogue, or an intimacy, when part of a poem. A poem or lyric essay in two columns where the right margin annotates the left.

10.

A poem addressed to an exterminator.

11.

An ode to a goat that is not inhabited by anthropomorphism, or by the need to humanize the goat in order to value its existence. An ode to a goat that celebrates what is goat-ness.

Scythe: An essay on hunger, expectation, blackberries, and poetry

1.

It is early April when we stumble upon the white flowers, their long, thorned limbs, a hillside of tangled thickets, a brambled bliss. I see blackberries, the possibility.

The kids sit in tall grass and chew on clover. They sketch five-petalled flowers and small leaves in their notebooks. They date the page, add a location: Our Blackberry Patch. It is the youngest who names it. 

We are on private land, possibly trespassing a space so forlorn even our breaths seem loud, boisterous. Nevermind that we drove thirty minutes to get to a lot where we'd discover a path rambling round a hill and then through a small forest leading us here.

Forget that this expedition, like most, is unplanned, a source of stubbed toes and ankles swollen by fire ant bites, a glorious accident—all of it. 

For the rest of the month, we make this pilgrimage twice a week just to check if the berries are ready.

By the end of April, the flowers have vanished. The kids draw raw thorns. The temperature warms.

It is May when the tiny green fists appear--the first berry buds--thousands studding the hillside like rhinestone shrapnel. 

We go in expectation. We carry our backpacks, our water bottles, our notebooks, our hope-eyes, our just-in-case bags and baskets. We are ridiculous. This is the pilgrim's plight--to look the fool while raving towards magic. 

By mid-May, the berries have turned a soft pink, a mottled early-redness, the dim fuschia of a second-aunt's powder blush. We discuss the fleshy berry made of multiple drupes. No one mentions the hours we've spent packing, preparing, driving, hiking, listening to terrible radio, doing the same things over and over, in the same place, with the same scope--only to arrive at the not-yet berries. The poem is Our Blackberry Patch. It is overflowing with not-yet berries. It is eating me alive. 

2. 

"Paper head, I prefer you
because of your emptiness;
from within you any
word could still be said."

This stanza from Margaret Atwood's "Paper Bag"  lives in a poem about making masks.

We poets are, I suspect, continually making masks and waiting to find ourselves in them. Losing, sinking, stumbling, missing the party, forgetting the event, conspiring with the headache.

There is a hunger that keeps us folding paper, making pages, avoiding people who are doing important and constructive things with time. This hunger is the servant of fascination.

The blackberries first blooms.

3.

Mommy is doing her fascination, the middle daughter tells a friend. Mommy isn't available to drive. Mommy is very distracted, and this is evidence of bad mothering in certain circles that never liked Mommy anyway. 

Today it is pickles.

Please understand that the pickle is actually a cucumber in translated form (which means it has spiritual powers) but also a verb with the power to astonish things. Please do not underestimate the power of staring at pickles. I am here for the god in the image of pickling. 

Fascination is transgressive. It is unpopular, anti-social, divise. It is a waste of time and idle hands.

Yes, it is a damned sin to follow the mole rat into the darkness and wait. But there is no other way into it, this fascination thing--there is no fascination that doesn't risk being wrong, seeming stupid, losing something. There is the watching and the waiting. There is no formula, no fascination machine, just the mollusk on the rim of a sink. 

4.

Midnight passes without trumpets.

I am still awake on the back porch. I am here for the stalk-shaped word that must arrive so I can reap what the page wants from me. When it arrives, the word is a scythe. 

Unlike the visionary who assembles a system in which to find safety, unlike the ideologue who uses imagination to create a fixed outcome, a predictability, you, the poet, are discovering something different every time. It is elusive, slippery, less than a vision, this slow dance of courting the poem's possibility. 

Matthew Olzmann once said, of poeming,: "Novelty is not enough to sustain our interest." The reader needs to see how we make meaning an intriguing object. It is not enough to dress the Barbie in a silver space suit if one isn't willing to offer her a story, a context.

If the poet must lie, let it be for something marvelous chased to the hilt, something worthy of a scabbard. A blackberry pie.

5.

"A lyric poem is a created and instantly destroyed world," said Marina Tsvetaeva. It takes patience to build something that only exists for an instant. The poem is like the human, present in uniqueness for an instant.

Dear poet, this has never been a question of ability or skill. Clearly, you are not the best poet. You cannot be the best of anything without fudging, lying, ignoring, erasing. 

You are not a politician or an elected official of the Poetry Republic. You have zero constituents. A reader is only there for a minute. Instead, you are someone who can't stop obsessing over words. You cannot represent anyone except the longing. You, in your lonely, should know that. You cannot be representative. You can only be the pen holding the scythe, the pinch-marks on the porch. 

This is not about the book or the byline.

It is the thing under the thing in padded slippers.

6.

Now that I have the word, now that the scythe has appeared, I must save it for the poem.

I must find the perfect nest for it to ruin.

If I can't find a poem, I will leave it in the graveyard, or use it as a title for an essay about a word I did not want to lose and yet failed to use properly. 

7.

I fail words all the time. In my mind, I tend a graveyard for lost poems, their bones and fragments, the lyrics that never rose from the page or found a way to settle in stanzas. There are so many footballs there.

As for the living poems, I worry about their health and safety, their longevity, their lifespan--especially the nocturnal dwellers with their tiny button eyes and furrowed brows. I worry about their avoidance of light. 

"How many poems will we actually be able to recall at the moment of our death ... or at the moment just before? And will they console us, anymore than we might already be consoled? Remembering is the poison ... "

- Brandon Shimoda, "Winter Dwelling"

Maybe the poems barely matter. And yet, like Shimoda, I find the writing irresistible. Like the god I can't really believe. Like the hummingbird with the fastest heart on the planet who must work so hard to restart it every morning that it sometimes just dies in its sleep.

8.

The sea the sea. The bone the bone.
Both are inside me when I read the words.
The book lends my life from the library
Or my life is the book on loan.

[Dan Beachy-Quick, "Homeric Philosophies"]

I owe the scythe to fascination. 

When I say fascination, I mean the awe that consumes our attention. An interest so ravenous it won't stop before revising the mental landscape, before bringing a mollusk to bear on a deity or a divan. The interior is altered to make space for ardor.

I mean the secret obsessions writers hide from any eyes that aren't a page.

I mean the sacrament of offering a wilderness to the notebook's cathedral, and all the private profaning one must undertake to properly worship something. I mean the field guide I made to save every tree and weed in the yard. I mean the narratives cut from my children's nightmares.

I mean the friction between fracking and fucking on the tongue, how both exploit the subject, and how this is not dissimilar from the way a poet touches the fragile places. How touch and torch are so close, and how fracking and fucking are both relations, operations, excavations.

I mean the way love has bent my body like a top-heavy tulip.

I mean Egon Schiele, Stephen Sondheim, Arvo Part and ashes to ashes though not quite dust. I mean dust is too easy, too shut.

I mean the figure of black dresses that have covered me like a personal font across a time-line, a chronology of blackouts.

I mean amnesia, paradox, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, the sad, raving nihilists.

I mean every plant I've killed with neglect, every friend I've loved best after losing, every way in which I'm better at elegies than tending or caring.

9.

Jericho Brown reminds us often, sometimes with a crown of flowers on his head, that the poem asks impossible, intractable things of the poet. "The poem is a poem because it asks us to reconsider ourselves and what we hold dear." The poem relies on "our ability to create emotion in people who were numb may be the greatest of our abilities, since this is what poets throughout history have been hated for."

Poetry is a discipline of desire. I don't want to stop, and I don't want it to end, so I find ways to brick it into my life. The poem wants relentless fascination, dedication, and interest. This whole thing is an argument for fascination that carries a shovel and scythe in its trunk. I mean something I've never had, namely, the slow discipline of waiting, the habit of paying one's respects to the possible. 

I mean I'm not finished. The poem wants a monk.

10

The monks chant. Iambic di-meters keep demons from resting in their throats and causing trouble. "Brother, we must die," recites a Trappist before throwing a few spadefuls of dirt over his shoulder.

Every day, the monks dig their own graves. What seems like a warning is disciplined anticipation. 

I want to wait for the poem like the monk waits for death.

I let a monk pray for me.

I pay a monk to pray for my dead mother.

I buy pansies in season to please her.

The monk welcomes the sins of mankind onto his shoulders. He then coddles those sins, he caresses and nurses them with chants and complines. The monk believes his songs will make the sins better, his words may raise the dead. He says he prays to lighten the burden of love for mothers who must worry about children. He says he prays to make it easier on God who stays busy loving so many. The cool part is that God lets him inch a little closer with each prayer. Contemplio, he says, is constant--every act of every instant is dedicated and divine.

Closer, closer….

11.

Every act of every instant is an open hand or enchanted pine straw. This is a fact.

Another fact no one talks about is that "the lion in God is the smoke in God is the whirlwind swayed by an image."

Traci Brimhall wrote this is an essay about her mother's death, an essay which sits with grief and its attendant guilt, the faithful partner in mourning a mother. Using second-person to extend the realm of complicity, Brimhall accuses the daughter:

"Her death hurt you. Her suffering never did. If the lion is also a devil, unbutton your shirt and feed him."

I don't think we can appreciate our mothers enough while they are alive and still wanting the best for us, still being pushy and interfering in the icons we'd made of independence. Perhaps it is this exorbitant individualism that leaves us without rituals or proper forms of expiation. 

Roman kids had to sacrifice animals on an altar in order to restore the familial bond with parents after death. I should be grateful that all I need to do is pay the monks to bless the water and mutter vigorously. 

But: the lion in God is the smoke in God is the whirlwind swayed by an image.

The love is the chord is the rage is the weft. The loss is the theft. The child is what's left to carry the ashes. The essay is the poem that couldn't handle it. 

12. 

"Again and again, I write to you regretting my tongue." Ocean Vuoung wrote this.

Ocean Vuong wrote an entire book about being a queer Vietnamese first generation immigrant, and this person--like the book--is a poem.

Poetry is the commitment one makes to longing. Poetry: this long love affair that competes with the rest.

And yet, every poem is the first one, every time is the first time, every verb is the first kiss, its spentness. All the awkward hesitation, curiosity, momentum, and suspense. It is erotic, this call to poem. 

The love poem takes what we imagine as threat or fulfillment and sits with it--the third thing that changes Eden. Lover, beloved, and that which came between them is what activates the poem and its longing. 

There is a love poem in that sidelong glance towards an unpleasant mother-in-law. There is a love poem in two-person tent crumpled in the trash bin. There is a beautiful, beautiful poem by Nicole Sealey called "Object Permanence":

There's a name for the animal
love makes of us, nomad, I think
like rain for the sound it makes.

13.

Our Blackberry Patch is the poem.

The pilgrims wait near the car, their backpacks solemn, the tingle of not-yet berries on their lips.

I am fascinated by what we’re doing, and what I’ll do anything to finish. What I love may be killing me. I’m not finished.

"Apologia"

Originally published in a journal that I asked to remove it. A poem that I love. A poem that meant the world to me.

Apologia

At 22, I disappeared for a minute. 

I did not respond when you called me. 

I wanted the death Alabama didn't offer. 
I did not want the local D & C option. I refused
the twilight sedation, the succor of a specialist 
doing the deed for me. 

I have no excuse for what 
I needed: to be 
guilty.

After visiting a former lover in Manhattan, 
I entered the Liberty Clinic, swallowed the first pill,
its origins French as the famous
green statue.

I swilled Mountain Dew to swallow
the final pill on the train for Coney Island.

I say Coney when I mean 
destination, the termination of pregnancy, the train ending 
in a carnival, apart. 

The gulls witnessed
everything. 

I stood on the boardwalk, marveling, 
dumbstruck by dizziness as something left 
this body, its warmth flooding my jeans. 

My hands shook like toy airplanes.

No doula or doctor or nurse or friend intervened.

No expert stood between 
my breath and the sky,
my breath and the clouds, clotting,
my breath and the unwanted baby,

my life

and the blood
on my hands, the certain solace,

a choice
I made with myself.
I did it all. I did everything.

I wore the silver mermaid necklace for years,
a souvenir.

Melissa Febos on writing trauma

Earlier this week, Lidia Yuknavitch tweeted Melissa Febos’ essay, “The Heart-Work: Writing About Trauma As a Subversive Act”, and gave me a reason to focus on the gendered discourse around trauma and memoir. Febos sets a familiar scene:

At a recent writers conference, during a panel of literary magazine editors, a female audience member posed a question about the potential audience for her story of trauma survival. One of the male editors rolled his eyes and shrugged. “I mean, I’m not sure we need any more of those stories.” The other panelists nodded in consensus: Stories like hers belonged on Oprah’s talk show, not in the hallowed realm of literary prose. Everyone knows we don’t need another one of those. The genre of victimhood is already so crowded. So gauche.

As if anything could be more gauche than the male writers who compliment female-identifying writers by describing their prose as “muscular” or dropping comparisons to Hemingway. As if we haven’t spent decades parsing the traumatic boredom of the American male novelist, studying its specific cocktails and alcoholisms.

Febos wrote this essay in January 2017, prior to the release of her incredible memoir, Abandon Me (in which she does exactly what she urges female writers to do, namely, tell the story that will kill you if you keep it). As Febos points out:

That these topics of the body, the emotional interior, the domestic, the sexual, the relational are all undervalued in intellectual literary terms, and are all associated with the female spheres of being is not a coincidence. What I mean is, this bias against “personal writing” is a sexist mechanism, founded on the false binary between the emotional (female) and the intellectual (male), and intended to subordinate the former.

Shame is at its most effective when urging silence. And shame comes to mind when I think of George Sand, who adopted the male pseudonym at the suggestion of her younger male lover, Jules Sandeau. George Sand, who dressed as a man in order to see without being seen. To protect herself from the predatory gaze leveraged against females by custom. After her death, Ivan Turgenev said: “What a brave man she was, and what a good woman.” 

Febos ends her essay by sharpening the pencil and preparing it to speak. Like Dorothy Allison, she offers encouragement as antivenom to silence.

We are writing the history that we could not find in any other book. We are telling the stories that no one else can tell, and we are giving this proof of our survival to one another.

What I mean is, tell me about your navel. Tell me about your rape. Tell me about your mad love affair, how you forgot and then remembered yourself. Tell me about your hands, the things they have done and held and hit and let go of. Tell me about your drunk father and your sister who lost her mind. Give them whatever names you want.

Don’t tell me that the experiences of a vast majority of our planet’s human population are marginal, are not relevant, are not political. Don’t tell me that you think there’s not enough room for another story about sexual abuse, motherhood, or racism. The only way to make room is to drag all our stories into that room. That’s how it gets bigger.

You write it, and I will read it.

I need to hear this. And I’m heartened by this amazing episode of Brian Gesko’s Antibody Reading Series now available online. So we can all hear Lauren Van Den Berg, Melissa Febos, and Tracy O’Neill talk about writing, living—and writing.

Sun in strange places: A few notes on writing motherhood and consent

1.

We learn the world through body language. Toddlers absorb the physical gestures quickly, the socializations of averted eyes, pointed fingers, stiff smiles. Time is a character on the stage, an unspoken protagonist. Maybe time is also the narrator we write around.

2.

Here’s the thing: motherhood is the mantle of knowing your death will be devastating. Slow or sudden, there is no way to repair their world once you leave it. How many unkissed knees?

3.

From our mothers, we inherit lived minutiae. I learned how to fold shirts, make cobbler, clean the rim of a bathtub. Like Marguerite Duras, I inherited my mother's fear, her particular blend of worry, her relentless stoicism, her fear of germs, the need to disinfect. Also the "hysterical love" I pour on my children.

"We separate ourselves from people by writing," Duras observes. Our mothers represent a madness, a lunacy "that doesn't preclude love" in the child's role of witness. Growing into a mother whose fear is familiar.

4.

"I think motherhood makes you obscene," writes Duras. "A mother indulges all of her games." A mother, like her child, must survive the act of mothering.

5.

In Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich articulates less gendered family roles for the future. She fleshes out a concept of community in which the child can be integrated into work, including a “new fatherhood” in which a man nurtures more. 

Seeing childcare as “enforced servitude”, Rich maintains that it can only be improved by acknowledging its value rather than debasing it. By elevating its status to something that even the high-status humans can do. 

Rich touches upon the solitary confinement of “full-time motherhood” and the “token nature of fatherhood” which gives a man rights and privileges over children toward whom he assumes only minimal responsibility. Her discussion on the “burden of emotional work” reveals the way rigid gender binaries prevent social change from happening--a nurturing father is seen to do “mother’s work”. And a mother's work is nothing.

Things have changed a little since Rich wrote this book, but only in the margins of heterosexual partnerships where this is made explicit, where this is a conscious effort.

6.

Borrowing from Barry Lopez's discussion of interior landscapes, I think Stories to Read Aloud to Your Fetus can be seen as an attempt to interiorize the landscape of expectancy in a world where female bodies have been rendered a form of public space.

7.

Then there’s the anger towards our mothers for looking to their husbands to fulfill their needs and making their own needs seem irresponsible or “emotional” . Examples of self-hatred include women who want sons, women who prefer male friends, women who can’t enjoy their bodies. We are steeped and socialized into this self-loathing because it is profitable. The way women hate themselves is a thriving market.

My obsession with cruelty. Susan Sontag, Simone Weil, and others. A religious impulse that flowered after having children. To know that love could be Kali, eating her children. Or Medea, killing them to protect them from the father's lack of love.

8.

Jacqueline Rose: “Motherhood is not knowledge or control. It may have to make non-stop decisions, but not according to some fetuses' logic of mastery.”

The mother’s right to life and experience is challenged by the cultural assumptions of what childhood should or should not include. The crime of exposure--of abandonment of a baby--is no longer limited to the infant but now extends into the entire developing life. There is no maternal instinct--there is the choice one makes to mother. There is the ongoing seesaw of it.

9.

In Beloved, Sethe kills her daughter out of love. Toni Morrison insisted on this. She insisted that it was love to kill a child in a world that conspired to kill her slowly, torturously, for entertainment.

10.

Elena Ferrante: “Men insert their thingy inside you and you become a box of flesh with a living doll inside.”

Was this the task of Freud’s hysterical patients--to exhibit all the fear and anxiety for a family who can then go on acting as if they are superior? And fine. Someone has to carry the terror and anxiety. Every family has its designated vessel.

11.

I need to write against the naturalistic fallacy that often undergirds patriarchal thinking. None of this is ordained by a god or by gravity—it is, like war, a choice humans make to normalize and accept certain patterns of behavior. It is also a choice that we must make to undo the damage.

A woman hides her body, hides her pain, hides her fear, because she is guilty. Because she asked for it. She is a mother. She is learning to live in the division we’ve established.

12.

There is no virtuousness in being a mother--there is merely a road one travels which changes the idea of destination, or destiny. As Jacqueline Rose observes: "it is the demand to be one thing only--love and goodness incarnate--that is intolerable for any mother and tears her mentally and physically to shreds."

13.

Obligatory childbearing and sacrifice is what Rose calls “the slave-owning version of motherhood,” an institution that has changed little over time. The decision not to mother is a basic question of consent--to have one’s body be used as a vessel. It is many other things as well, but it is never not this one: a question of consent.

14.

I love D.A. Powell for saying: “If the poet doesn’t risk absurdity, he’s not even in the game.”

Writing motherhood is this dance with an absurdity so astonishing one is tempted to call it God.

A list of places that like book reviews

When you’ve read too many incredible books and you need to write about it or talk about it and no one else has read that book yet or wants to chat at the pitch you think it deserves, there is this thing called the book review that you can try (see Julija Sukys’ how-to).

However, it is the case that some journals do not accept unsolicited book reviews. There is not enough life left in the hourglass to be sad about this. Instead, you can submit your unsolicited reviews to the journals that welcome them. I cribbed some links from the great list at Entropy but I also found a few places to add and a few journals that no longer seem to be operating or accepting reviews. Poets & Writers also has a list of book review outlets, but most of them are for authors or publishers seeking to have a book reviewed rather than for writers trying to publish a book review. I wanted to focus on places to submit book reviews. So: I did.

General notes etc.

I hope this saves you time and makes it easier to celebrate the work of fellow writers. What follows is a brief methodology that explains what was included in this list—and a few general caveats.

• Many academic journals don’t accept summer submissions.

• Most journals are looking for reviews of books published by indie or small presses in the last year, though a few journals make exceptions for time and self-publication. I tried to note these exceptions where I found them.

• The interview has become an alternate form of book review, a collaborative conversation in which the book’s themes are discussed with the author. This is especially wonderful in you choose to review books outside your lived experience. For example, VIDA notes that reviews by white, heteronormative authors continue to predominate. That is a gauntlet that many of us need to address in our reviews. We need to review BIPoC poets even if we are worried that we can’t do their words justice. The interview or conversation is an excellent way to highlight the works of writers that we don’t feel qualified to “review” given our inherent structural biases. As a result, many lit mags are looking for interviews. I’ve added those where I found them.

• Some journals have a running list of books they would like to see reviewed. Generally, the journal or press will send you a comp version for review. For the most part, journals don’t limit themselves to the reviews on that list. But… some do.

• Many journals especially value reviews of books by under-represented or marginalized persons. See the comment about interviews above.

• If the journal compensates, I tried to add this, whether money or in journal copy. Look for a $ sign if you’re looking for dollar signs.

• Journals often have different submission methods for book reviews. I tried to include the means of submission, whether by snail mail, email, Submittable, or an online system specific to the journal itself.

• I included word limits where I found them, though book reviews can run between 800 and 3000 words, depending on the journal. Micro-reviews between 300 and 500 words are also increasingly popular.

• I also distinguished by journals that want to be queried and journals that accept the review as a submission without prior querying.

• Unless the journal specifically addressed simultaneous submissions, I assume SS were fine and didn’t mention them.

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Places to Submit Book Reviews (esp. poetry)

4squarereview: Online. Publishes poetry reviews quarterly. Send 1,000-word reviews of contemporary books of poetry to 4squarereview@gmail.com. Focus on books published by small and independent presses.

3: AM Magazine: Online. Publishes poetry reviews & general criticism. Submit by email directly to nonfiction/criticism editor, Joseph Schreiber at jmesch78@gmail.com. Special attention given to literature in translation; experimental, postmodern and innovative literature; unconventional approaches to LGBTQ themes.

32 Poems: Print & online. Submittable. Prefer reviews over 1,000 words for sustained exploration. “Avoid passive voice. (Don’t tell us what the poems are, but rather consider how they act on a reader.)”

Adroit Journal: Online. Submittable. Accepts both reviews and interviews, though currently preferring interviews. Includes a list of books the editors want reviewed. Short application for reviews and interviews here (don’t worry, it’s not a resume…just a list of questions about what you want to review as well as the request for work sample).

AGNI: Online & print. 1,500-to-3,000-word review essays “that lift us to your singular inquiry-driven vantage: show us what your chosen book reveals to you that only you can show”. Query Reviews Editor Rachel Mennies or submit review directly online through portal.

American Book Review: Online. Query by email.

American Microreviews & Interviews: Online. Query by email. 7-10 sentence reviews.

American Poetry Review: Print & online. Accepts reviews and interviews of poetry books. Submittable.

Another Chicago Magazine: Online. Accepts review of all genres. Also interested in innovative review forms. Submittable.

Apofenie: Online. Opening its book review section soon. Query or email submissions to apofeniemagazine@gmail.com. Specify genre and include a three-sentence biographical statement.

Asian Review of Books: Online. Query by email to editor@asianreviewofbooks.com with details of your experience, interests and links to writing samples.

Aster(ix) Journal: Online & print. Focus on amplifying the voices of women of color. Query editor by email on WOC-authored books.

Asymptote: Online. Query by email. Focus on recently published/ forthcoming titles translated into English.

Barcelona Review: Online. Under 3000 words. Email submissions and queries to editor Jill Addams at editor@barcelonareview.com. Be sure to follow email instructions on the website. “Material should be related in some way to the world of books and writing; creative non-fiction (e.g., personal essays) that fits with the review is welcome. Literary criticism and academic pieces are not what we're after.”

Bending Genres: Online. Accepts “microviews”, or short reviews, of poetry and hybrid chapbooks or collections. Submittable. Contact Reviews Editor Emily Bertholf for details.

Berfrois: Online. Email editor Russell Bennetts directly to submit or query.

Big Other: Online. Accepts a variety of book reviews including poetry. Submittable. 6,000 words max. Also accepts interviews under 6,000 words via Submittable.

Borderlands Texas Poetry Review: Print & online. Accepts poetry reviews. Editors partial to reviews that include more than one book. 1500 max for general review, though this can be longer for multi-book reviews. Submittable.

BOXCAR Poetry Review: Print & online. Accepts reviews of first poetry collections, no chapbooks, and interviews between poets. Submittable. Reviews should engage the text (ie. close reading) and may either be academic or personal in their nature. Between 500-1500 words. Submit reviews here. For interviews, focus is on poets who have recently published first book. Editors prefer conversations between poets who already have some familiarity with each other. Query by email at interviews@boxcarpoetry.com and indicate "interview" in the header.

Boston Review: Print & online. Accepts variety of book reviews, including poetry. No chapbooks. Submittable. 5,000 words max.

Calyx: Print & online. Focus is on reviews of books written by women. Also accepts chapbook reviews. 500-1000 words for collections and 50-100 words for chapbooks. Use online submission system.

Chattahoochee Review: Print & online. Publishes poetry reviews and pays $150 per review. Submittable for final reviews or, alternately, you can query at tcr@gsu.edu about the possibility of a particular review or review essay.

Clarion Magazine: Online. Submittable. Email the editors at clarion@bu.edu for more information.

Cleaver Magazine: Online. Open to all kinds of reviews. Contact editors directly. For fiction and nonfiction reviews and interviews contact Michelle Fost at mfost@me.com. For poetry, email  Claire Oleson at olesonc@kenyon.edu.

Cleveland Review of Books: Online. Microreviews not paid, but longer reviews receive modest compensation. Query by email. Includes a guide for pitching as well as list of possible books. Focus is on books related to Midwest or authored by Midwestern authors.

Colorado Review: Print & online. Submittable. 750-1,000 words.

Compulsive Reader: Online. Accepts reviews in all genres. Submit reviews to editor Maggie Ball by email to maggieball@compulsivereader.com.

DIAGRAM: Online. Open to short (400-600 words) and long (2,000-4,000 words) review forms. “We like reviews that play with the genre, transcend the genre, do something unusual or fun, or just plain rock. We are particularly interested in reviews using unusual or unique forms.” Submit to reviews@thediagram.com.

Diode: Online. Accepts poetry reviews and interviews year round. Submit by email to submit@diodepoetry.com. Send in .doc format.

Dublin Review of Books: Online. Send by email to info@drb.ie. Between 900 and 1500 words.

EcoTheo Review: Online. Accepts reviews of all genres. Prefers 1300-1800 words. Query and submit by email to Reviews Editor Hannah VanDerHart at hannah@ecotheo.org.

Empty Mirror: Online. Accepts a variety of book reviews and interviews, though focus is on poetry and literary fiction.. Submittable. Reviews anywhere between 300 and 3,000 words. Interviews up to 10,000 words.

Entropy: Online. Submit by email. 600-2,000 words.

Event: Print & online. Contact Reviews Editor Susan Wasserman by sending an email to event@douglascollege.ca and mentioning reviews. Have a pitch or sample ready and read the reviews on their blog to get a sense of what editors want in length and style.

Fanzine: Online. Submit review by email to submissions@thefanzine.com.

FIVE: 2: ONE: Online & print. Submittable. Under 1000 words. Submit under Nonfiction category.

Fjords Review: Online & print. Accepts reviews of multiple genres as well as interviews. Submittable.

FORMA: Online & print. Accepts poetry reviews. Put review and subject in the subject line of email and submit to FORMAmag@circeinstitute.com.

Full Stop: Online. Focuses on debuts, works in translation, and books published by small presses. Submit by email to reviews editors.

Gasher Journal: Online. Focus on book reviews for small press works only. 1,000-2,000 words. Submittable.

Gettysburg Review: Print. Only accept essay-reviews comparing multiple books.

Georgia Review: Print & online. No SS. Standard reviews which focus on one book (typically 3–5 double-spaced pages) and essay-reviews which compare multiple books on a theme (typically 10-20 double-spaced pages).

Gigantic Sequins: Print. Submittable. Pays in copy of journal.

Glass Poetry Journal: Online. Accepts reviews of poetry chapbooks, anthologies, and collections. Submit using online submissions manager and clicking “reviews” as genre.

Gravel: Online. Accepts poetry book reviews. Open during academic year for submissions. Submittable.

Green Mountains Review: Print & online. Accepts poetry and fiction book reviews. Submittable. For unsolicited reviews, make sure to include a cover letter.

Grist: Online & print. Accepts reviews of all genres published by indie or academic presses. Around 700 words. Also have lists of books they’d like reviewed. f you have an interest in reviewing for Grist, email Reviews Editor Sarah Yancy at schatela@vols.utk.edu.

Guernica: Online. Submittable. Accepts book reviews & interviews. Less than 2,500 words. Submit in Shortform Nonfiction category.

Harvard Review: Doesn’t generally accept unsolicited reviews but if you are interested in reviewing please write to reviews@harvardreview.org describing the kind of books you would be interested in reviewing and enclosing one or more recent clips.

Headcannon Magazine: Online. Email submissions.

Heavy Feather Review: Online & print. Accepts poetry reviews. Maintains list of books currently available for review. Email about any reviews or interviews.

Hoot: Online, or on the back of a postcard when possible. Less than 150 words. Must be of a recently published book (within the last year) published by an indie or small press.

Hudson Review: Print. No SS.

Identity Theory: Online. Submit by email to editor, Matt Borondy.

Iowa Review: Print & online. Submittable. Accepts unsolicited reviews during fall semester only.

KGB Bar Online Review: Online. If you would like to review a book, send a pitch to kgbbarmag@gmail.com. We encourage you to write to us before beginning to draft the review-essay. There is no strict word limit to critical reviews; depending on the title, they can range from under 1,000 words to much longer.

Kenyon Review: Online. 1,000 to 1,200 words. Written for a general-interest literary audience. $50 compensation for online publication. Submittable.

La Piccioletta Barca: Accepts interviews under 8,000 words.

Lantern Review: Print & online. Accepts reviews of recent poetry collections. Under 3,000 words. Submit via online system.

Latin American Literature Today: Print & online. Focus on reviews of contemporary Latin American literature, including poetry. 500 to 1,200 words. See book review style guide. Email reviews to Arturo Gutiérrez Plaza, Book Reviews Editor, at  book.reviews.editor.lalt@ou.edu.

Little Stone Journal:  Mostly poetry reviews. Under 2,000 words. Send as many as 3 by email.

Los Angeles Review: Print & online. Accepts fiction, CNF, and poetry reviews. 800 to 1,400 words.Prefers not to publish titles that have received significant media exposure. Include the book’s title, author’s name, name of the press, publication date, and ISBN in upper left corner before review. Include short 3rd person bio of reviewer at bottom of the review. Engage the book in reflection, social commentary, and/or thoughtful critique. No summarizing or book-bashing reviews. Email reviews to reviewassist@losangelesreview.org.

Marlboro Review: Print. Snail-mail submission. Doesn’t read subs during the summer.

Michigan Quarterly Review: Online. Under 3,000 words. Submittable.

Necessary Fiction: Online. Focus is fiction. Maintains a running list of fiction books for writers to review. Contact by email with requests at reviews@necessaryfiction.com.

Nervous Breakdown: Temporarily closed for book review submissions “but check back soon.”

New Delta Review: Print & online. Accepts book reviews and interviews. Submittable.

New England Review of Books: Online. Accepts all genre reviews. Pitch or query your review directly to editors@nerobooks.org,

New Orleans Review: Online. Accepts reviews of all genres. Also interested in reviews of books that have been largely neglected (often publications from small/independent presses) in the past 5, 10, 15, or even 20 years. 500 - 1500 words. Submittable.

New Southern Fugitives: Online. Pays $50 per book review. Under 2,000 words. Submittable.

On the Seawall: Online. Accepts poetry reviews. Submit or query by email (with work attached as a Word doc) to Ron Slate at seawallsubmissions[at]gmail[dot]com. 

PANK: Online. Accepts reviews of books of all genres and author interviews. Submittable.

Periodicities: Online. Open to submissions of previously unpublished poetry-related reviews, interviews and essays. Submit as .doc with author biography to periodicityjournal@gmail.com.

Pleiades: Print & online. 800-1200 words. Accepts submissions between Dec. 1 and January 1 every year. Submit using online submission system and mark genre as “book reviews for Pleiades”. Favorable to experimental reviews—reviews that borrow from creative nonfiction, adopt a unique form, compare something new to something old, etc.—as well as “retro-reviews,” or reviews that considered books published at an earlier time through a new lens, perhaps in context with newer books. Query Reviews Editor Taneum Bambrick you are interested in doing a three-minute review for online publication only. For a sample three-minute review, click here. 

Poet’s Quarterly: Online. Accepts poetry reviews and interviews. 500-2,000 words. Email reviews to reviews@poetsquarterly.com.Email interviews to interviews@poetsquarterly.com.

Poetry: Print & online. Poetry review essays. “We strongly prefer pieces that are not single-book reviews, but rather review essays that discuss two or three books in light of larger matters.” 1,200 - 1,500 words. Submittable.

Poetry Cafe: Online. Focus is on poetry chapbooks. Query editor by email for submission guidelines at risa@thepoetrycafe.online.

Poetry Flash: Online. Snail mail. Query first.

Poetry Northwest: Print & online. Accepts reviews for poetry collections, including longford. Query editors Aaron Barrell & Erin Malone at editors(at)poetrynw.org.

Porter House Review: Online. Voice-driven reviews. Under 2,000 words.

Portland Review: Online. Between 1,200-2500 words. Submittable.

Prairie Schooner: Print & online. 1,000 words max. Submittable.

Prospectus: Online & print. Reviews of chapbooks, full-length collections of poetry, short-story collections, first novels, and art books. The piece reviewed must have been published no longer than one year before submission of the review. 250-300 words and include the publisher’s name and cost of the book. Reviews may also appear on the Prospectus website. Email to Celia Alvarez at editor@hambysterpublishing.com.

Rain Taxi: Online. Submit reviews by email. Around 500 words.

Rhythm & Bone Press: Online. Plans to start accepting book reviews. Query editor by email.

Sabotage Reviews: Online. Accepts reviews for poetry chapbooks as well as anthologies and collections. 500-1,000 words. Read submission guidelines and submit by email to appropriate editor.

Salamander: Print & online. Accepts poetry book reviews. Online submission manager and limited reading period. Query reviews editor Valerie Duff-Strautm.

Sewanee Review: Online & print. Word count: 10,000. Submittable.

Sonora Review: Online & print. 3,000 words max. Submittable or pitch by email. Also accepts interviews under 4,000 words.

Southeast Review. Print & online. Accepts reviews from all genres of books by small presses all year. Prefer single book reviews. 800- 1,200 words. Submit book reviews by email to Reviews Editor at serbookreview@gmail.com. For interview submissions, use Submittable.

Southern Humanities Review: Online. Submittable.

Southern Review of Books: Online. Accepts reviews & interviews in all genres of books related to American South. Email at editors@southernreviewofbooks.com with a link to your writing (no attachments, please). Covers new books the same month they’re published, and avoid conflicts of interest when assigning review coverage (i.e., no personal connections between critics and authors).

Split Lip Magazine: Online. Looking for smart, compelling book reviews and author interviews (or interviews of people in the publishing industry). Reviews should be roughly 800 words and are published online within a month or so of the book publication date. Interviews from 1,000 to 1,500 words. Use online query/submission form.

Stirring: Online. Accepts poetry reviews. Up to 700 words. Submit by e-mail to Katie Culligan at
stirring.reviews@gmail.com.

Tarpaulin Sky: Online & print. Email review to reviews@tarpaulinsky.com. If you have never reviewed for them before, send a brief cover letter with review history and links.

Temz Review: Print & online. Query at thetemzreview@gmail.com. Interested in reviews of Canadian small press titles and works in translation.

The Bind: Online. A review site devoted to books by women and nonbinary authors. Preference for creative review forms. Pitches, queries, or completed reviews (creative or traditional) can be emailed to the.bind.reviews [at] gmail [dot] com.

The Cafe Review: Print & online. Reviews of poetry books. Payment is two copies of journal. Prefer brief reviews under 600 words. Submit by email to mgrumbling@thecafereview.com.

The Chapbook Review: Online. Reviews chapbooks in various genres. Contact using online form to query editors.

The Festival Review: Print & online.

The Nonconformist: Online. Submit reviews by email.

The Point: Online & print. 1,500-3,000 words. Compensation for print issue.

The Puritan: Online. Submittable. Focus on Canadian literature. Submit book reviews under “Essays”. Pays $100 per review.

The Rumpus: Online. Accepts fiction/other reviews & poetry reviews. 1,200–2,500 words. Submittable. For interviews, email Monet Patrice Thomas at monet@therumpus.net.

The Rupture: Online. Direct queries to rupture.reviews@gmail.com.

The Sun: Print & online. Accepts interview pitches. Submittable. Pays $1000-$2000 for piece.

Tinderbox Poetry: Online. Accepts reviews for poetry collections and chapbooks. Submittable. 500-800 words for a chapbook/micro/nontraditional review. 750-1000 words for a full length collection review. Reviews editor Sarah Ann Winn.

Tint Journal: Online. Reviews & interviews related to ESL writers. Between 700 and 3,000 words. Email submissions.

Triangle House: Online. Seeking book reviews and interviews for our their new quarantine blog, Housebound. Pitch by email at becca@triangle.house.

Triquarterly: Print & online. Only interviews. Pays $ honoraria.

Under a Warm Green Linden: Online. Submittable. Accepts interviews and reviews of poetry books. Over 800 words. SS discouraged but journal responds in less than 3 weeks.

Vagabond City Lit: Online. Accepts poetry reviews with special interest in chapbooks. 400-800 words. Submit by email to Bob at vagabondcityliterary@gmail.com

Valparaiso Poetry Review: Print & online. Submit review by email to editor Edward Byrne at VPR@valpo.edu.

Vitni Review: Online. Submit reviews by email.

Virginia Quarterly Review: Print & online. Between 2,000-2,400 words. Pays $500.

Washington Independent Review of Books: Online. Accepts pitches for interviews, pieces about books, authors, reading, and writing formatted as essays, commentary, lists, book news, event coverage, interviews, etc. We pay $25 per accepted submission; there are no kill fees. Email pitches to: editor@washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com. No unsolicited book reviews.

Whale Road Review: Online. Accepts poetry reviews of all lengths. 300-500 words. “We want to publish reviews of poetry and short prose in whatever forms you find them: full-length books, chapbooks, anthologies, albums, other literary journals, reading series, performances, unconventional literary events, etc. We prefer to publish reviews that were written because the reviewer fell in love with the work and needed to tell others about it. Please send reviews as an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf) to whaleroadreview@gmail.com with REVIEW as the subject line.”

West Branch: Online & print. Query with a sample by email to westbranch@bucknell.edu. Reviews are compensated with money.

World Literature Today: Online & print. Send book review to book reviews editor Rob Vollmar at robvollmar@ou.edu.

A few outlets that focus on reviewing fiction

Fiction Southeast: Online. Accepts reviews of short story collections (preferably collections of flash or micro shorts). Also likes interviews with authors of short story collections. Submittable.

“It seems to me that the goal of the poetry critic is to bring certain books into the public arena, to serve as a conscientious curator to contemporary poetry.”

— Ada Limón

A few excellent ways into the poetry review

I can’t say enough about Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ list of “Poetry Questions” as a resource for reviewing books as well as individual poems. It is magic I keep close. Matthew Zapruder’s “Show Your Work” engages the specific act of “talking about” poetry on the page—and how this looks, sounds, and feels. On more immediate questions, I love Rae Armantrout’s “Poetic Silence” and Mary Ruefle’s “Notes On Tone” and Kazim Ali’s “Genre-Queer: Notes Against Binaries” and pretty much anything you find about reviewing that is available for free in the 2013 issue of This Evening Will Come devoted to reviews and reviewing.

A few inspiring & innovative ways to review or engage books

Aisha Sabatini Sloan, “Review of Renee Gladman’s Calamities” (Tsky)

Angie Sijun Lou, “Chen Chen’s Dreams: A Review of When I Grow Up I Want To Be A List of Further Possibilities” (American Poetry Review)

Anjali Enjeti, “Now You See Me: Three Asian-American Poets on Visibility” (Georgia Review)

Ander Monson, “The Skeptical Gaze” (Los Angeles Review of Books)

Ander Monson, “Review of Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge” (DIAGRAM)

Austen Leah Rose, “Touching Time: The Poetry and Performance of Charles Simic” (Poetry Northwest)

Carrie Chappell, “Did Not Shave My Legs For This: A Conversation With Kristin Sanders’ Cuntry in Three Line Dances” (Fanzine)

Dana Levin, “I am Happiest, Here, Now!”: Arthur Sze’s Poetry of Witness: The Ginkgo Light” (AGNI)

Dorothy Chan, “Review of A Nail the Evening Hangs On” (Split Lip Magazine)

Francis Cannon, “Review of Taneum Baumbrick’s Vantage” (Green Mountains Review)*

Gabrielle Bates, “Review of Fanny Choi’s Soft Science” (RHINO)

Hannah VanDerHart, “Choosing Love As Asylum” (AGNI)

Jamison Crabtree, “Review of Carleen Tibbetts, DATACLYSM.jpg” (DIAGRAM)

Jane Huffman, “Dorah Malech’s Flourish” (Iowa Review)

Julia Bouwsma, “My Body Is A Holler: (Dis)embodiment and Landscape in Taneum Bambrick’s Vantage, Savannah Sipple’s WWJD and Other Poems, and Rosalie Moffett’s Nervous System” (Poetry Northwest)

Julie Marie Wade, “An Atlas of Unmappables: Jennifer S. Cheng’s Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems” (The Rumpus)

Laura Maher, “The Fragmented Quest: A Review of L.I. Henley’s Starshine Road (The Bind)

Madeline Wattenberg, “Mapping the Body in Jena Osman’s Motion Studies” (The Bind)

Marcos Santiago Gonsales, “Staging An Epidemic: What is AIDS to you?” (The New Inquiry)

Maria C. Goodson, “Poetry My Dad Would Like, And Why That’s a Good Thing” (Atticus Review)

Marlin M. Jenkins, “Equilibrium: Review Ending in a Found Q & A” (The Bind)

Oana Sanziana Marian, “In the Time that Remains: Reflections on the Poetry of Derek Mahon” (The Yale Review)

Sarah McCarry, “The Taiga Syndrome: Or, A Haunting” (TOR)

Sejal A. Shah, “Ritual as Resolution: Amarnath Ravva’s American Canyon” (Kenyon Review)

Stacey Balkun, “Fusion & Fissures in Conjoining by Heidi Czerwiec” (The Bind)

Robert Wrigley, “The Gift: On Sylvia Plath” (Fogged Clarity)

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A few angles into reviewing poetry books (i.e. questions worth asking the mind that has become a tree stump when staring at the page)

1. Theme. What is the book about? What does the poet want to do with this book? Keep this in mind while reviewing—a review isn’t about what you want from the book but about what the book wants to give. The question is how the poet accomplishes this.

2. Title. How does the title shape or relate to the poems? Is there a conceptual relationship the poet wants to establish or challenge? Are there any algorithms or equations being set up or displaced by or in the poems? How are the individual poem titles used to advance the theme or tone of the book? Are titles used to subvert naming conventions? If so, how and why?

3. Dialogue. Is the poet in dialogue with or conversant with other poets and poems? If so, which ones? Why? What other art forms or media does the poet introduce? How do these alternate forms of media inform the poems or thematic matter?

4. Address. Are the poems addressed to a visible "you" or an invisible one? How does the direct address shape the texture of time in the poems?

5. Repetitions. Make a list of words or images that are repeated. How does the poet use or rely on these images? What does the poet ask them to carry? What connotations are carried forward and which (if any) are carefully peeled off? Why? In what context?

6. Current events. Do the poems engage any current events? If so, how? Examine the context. Then examine it again.

7. Syntax is defined as the arrangement of words by which their connection and relation in a sentence is shown. How does the poet use syntax? How are conjunctions used? How is punctuation used, and is it performative?

8. Is any particular type of expertise being depicted or challenged in these poems? Are there any discursive considerations? If so, do the challenges occur at the formal level or at the level of grammar and syntax? Why? How?

9. Who is the I? How big or restrictive is it? Are any objects or places asked to stand in for an I or a We? How so?

10. Setting. Where are the poems set--does it vary or revolve around a single place that is fleshed out? How important is setting to these poems--is there a pastoral theme, an eco-poetic involvement, a regionalism? Why?

11. Lists. What, if anything, is being inventoried or listed?

12. Time. What is absolute and what is contingent in these poems? What is capable of changing? How does this relate to tone, if at all? How is time treated, whether by tense or chronology or cracks in both?

13. Organization. If the book is divided into sections, make a brief map of each section and where it goes. Stare at the titles and epigraphs and treat them as rivulets leading into the river of the text. How do they interact with the poems? 

14. Overarching threads. Have you included at least three good quotes from the poems themselves? How have you tied those quotes to your general observations about the book?

15. If you are reviewing a minority poet, try to engage the text at the level of formal concerns. This is a conversation I keep hearing.

16. Formalist close reading. Consider reviewing from a structuralist or linguistic or semiotic lens if you are comfortable playing tennis on that court. But don’t force the game. Don’t force a formalist lens on a text if you can’t actually see through it.

17. Aim for nuance rather than generality. Save the meta for the sermons. We are flooded by so many generalities and trends that sometimes it feels impossible to see the details.

A reading of "Lust Is Grief"

First published in the beautiful Virga, with so much gratitude to editor Laura Page. I’m including the text so that everyone can hear it.

I cut off the intro of my night porch reading of a poem first published in @Virgamag but I’m grateful to @TaraSkurtu & everyone out there right now. All the love for #InternationalPoetryCircle and my fellow mammals. All the broken terrified love. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/MNLMCx8prW

— Alina Stefanescu (@aliner) March 18, 2020

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Lust Is Grief

"Lust is grief that has turned over in bed to look the other way."

Donald Hall

"Don't Disappear" by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, up close, in context

On it’s face, “Don’t Disappear” isn’t extraordinary so much as sad, embarrassing, desperate. Yevtushenko’s final drafts of this poem appeared in 1977. It’s a poem addressed to a lover, and the structure is simple: six stanzas rooted around the anaphora, “Don’t disappear…”. 

The context

A love poem with a third party, or shadow, deserves a little context.

Y. married poet Bella Akhmadulina in 1954. They stayed married until 1959, but Y. couldn’t stand the attention Bella received from admirers. Jealousy, both sexual and literary, plagued their relationship. According to official rumor:

The marriage finally fell apart when Akhmadulina unexpectedly became pregnant. Yevtushenko did not want children and insisted that she terminated the pregnancy. Following the ensuing divorce, Yevtushenko said that their love “had not died; it had stopped being,” and he later attempted to win her back. Despite their difficulties, the pair did ultimately manage to remain friends, and when Yevtushenko married his last wife, Maria, Akhmadulina even came to help set the table for the wedding meal.

In 1961, Y. married Galina Sokol-Lukonina. In 1968, the couple adopted a boy named Peter. I can’t find information about when Galina and Y. divorced, so it’s possible that this poem was written to Galina with Jan Butler in the background.

Or to Irish translator Jan Butler, who was translating his work in the 1970’s—and whom he eventually married in 1978. They had two sons before divorcing in 1986.

Less than a year later, in 1987, Y. met Maria Novikova. They married in the same year. Maria became his fourth and final wife. They had two sons before Y. died in 2017.

*

And now, the poem itself. I’ll start with Albert C. Todd’s translation, because it’s the one that often comes up when this poem is mentioned. It is Wednesday and I am nit-picking. I wanted to re-read it in order to examine the ellipses. To see how Yevtuschenko’s use of ellipses changes the poem. And to compare the translations.

Don’t Disappear (translated by Albert C. Todd)

Don't disappear.... By disappearing from me, 
you will disappear from yourself, 
betraying your own self forever, 
and that will be the basest dishonesty.

Don't disappear.... To disappear is so easy.
It's impossible to resurrect one another.
Death drags down too deep.
Death even for a moment is too long.

Don't disappear.... Forget the third shadow.
In love there are only two. There are no thirds.
We both will be pure on Judgment Day, 
when the trumpets call us to account.

Don't disappear.... We have redeemed sin.
We both are free of the law, we are sinless.
We are worthy together of the forgiveness of those
whom we have unintentionally wounded.

Don't disappear.... One can disappear in an instant, 
but how could we meet later in the centuries ahead? 
Is your double possible in the world, 
and my double? Only barely in our children.

Don't disappear.... Give me your palm.
I am written on it-this I believe.
What makes one's last love terrible
is that it is not love, but fear of loss.

Rupert Moreton’s translation is richer somehow, more carnal, more intimate. It also works with a rhyme scheme that Todd likely abandons in his translation. It’s fuller. It’s thicker. It’s more formal and baroque and possibly prettier. Of course it builds this brocade over the same desperation, but in a classical mode.

Don’t Disappear" (translated by Rupert Moreton)

Don’t disappear… For if that’s what you do,
in pieces from your very self you’ll vanish,
betraying all you are for ever, too –
this basest fraud we only then can banish.

Don’t disappear… for it’s too easy and
we find we cannot resurrect each other.
Death pulls us in too deeply in its sand.
It’s careless to succumb to dying’s smother.

Don’t disappear… Third shadows cast away –
in love there are but two. The third’s deception.
And we shall both be pure on Judgement Day,
when trumpets summon us to that reception.

Don’t disappear… for sin we have atoned.
We are not under judgement, we are shriven.
Of course, we didn’t really mean to wound
our peers, so we deserve to be forgiven.

Don’t disappear. You can in but a wink –
but how then can we manage future meetings?
Of doubles – yours and mine – then can we think?
It may but happen in our children’s greetings.

Don’t disappear. So, give your palm to me.
I truly think you’ll find on it I’m written.
The final love is dreadful, for you see
it isn’t love – by fear of loss we’re bitten.

Image Source: Tarnmoor

A few notes on “showpiece dissidence”

How to determine when a poet is engaging in “showpiece dissidence”? What does “selling out” mean in the context of public poetry? Who is the riskiest risker? And who is merely mouthing the dissent that is trending?

I don’t know. I don’t know that we can know without rising to the defense of an ideology.

Y. never took a clear ideological position—he often straddled a line (or a nuance) to the point of estrangement from the Russian exile community. Joseph Brodsky, for example, resigned from the American Academy of Arts and Letters when Yevtushenko was made an honorary member. "He throws stones only in directions that are officially sanctioned and approved," Brodsky said.

Or he doesn’t throw the right stones. He criticizes anti-Semitism and Stalin but not Marx. He questions the bonuses given to writers who celebrated Russia and the Soviet state but he stays loyal to the state, itself. He identifies as Russian, as a Soviet citizen, at a time when resistance requires the cutting of all ties. Or he solidifies a friendship with a cigarette stub. Or he works within the system and doesn’t defect. He gets published in major magazines. He receives state awards. He benefits from the right to travel abroad, one of the most coveted freedoms in the USSR and Iron Bloc states. The list of wrongs is long.

Y. was, in fact, a reformer, a reform communist rather than a revolutionist. His 1965 interview with Olga Carlisle makes this clear. Carlisle introduces the interview:

In 1965, Yevtushenko tells me that he still believes that a renewed Marxism might be reconciled with literary integrity; that the present system is not incompatible with human and artistic growth. This is an uncomfortable position today in Moscow, where a stifling Socialist Realism is the only sanctioned aesthetic doctrine.

As an idealist, an admirer of abstraction, Y.’s love poems to women never rose to the level of ardor that his love poems for Russia embody.

Can a poet be a patriot of place as well as a dissident? Would it have been better if Y. was a White Russian monarchist, a firmly-anti-communist dissident who rejected the whole rather than its particular?

Hitler hated the USSR too. We forget how close one totalitarianism nestles to another.

After Y.’s death, Dan Piepenbring suggested:

“..sometimes a poet can achieve that rare thing: popularity. All it requires is persistence, good fortune, and cultural conditions dramatically different from those of the contemporary U.S. At the height of his powers, Yevtushenko commanded audiences of thousands in the Soviet Union, where his readings gave voice to the hopes and fears of a generation struggling to come out from under Stalinism.” 

Whether Y.’s popularity came at the price of friends in high places isn’t always the appropriate question to ask. I say this because friends in high places impact the career of poets in every country—whether a democracy or a dictatorship. To different degrees, the anointment is there in the ointment of any public art.

(As for the problematic, Y., like many male poets of his generation, speaks from a socialization that marginalizes the lives and value of female or LGBTQ persons. I don’t hold him to a standard that didn’t exist when he was navigating the years of Soviet communism. Or rather, I don’t know what revelation can come from holding him that.)

"It's not enough to fight for freedom. We must also fight the misuse of freedom, and develop our idea of it. Most people don't care about freedom of speech because they don't have anything to say.” Y. said this in 2006, when he was still holding a candle of hope that Putin might usher in a new era for Russia.

Did he realize that religious nationalism would be the vehicle for consolidation of authoritarianism? How does a poetics of aspirational patriotism interact with propaganda to create a sense of complacency or fatalism? Why am I asking myself these questions aloud in a room without windows and a language with so few words for longing?

Poems for broken things

I can’t get over Carl Phillips’ “Dirt Being Dirt”. Here it is in its entirety:

Dirt Being Dirt

The orchard was on fire, but that didn’t stop him from slowly walking
straight into it, shirtless, you can see where the flames have
foliaged—here, especially—his chest. Splashed by the moon,
it almost looks like the latest proof that, while decoration is hardly
ever necessary, it’s rarely meaningless: the tuxedo’s corsage,
fog when lit scatteredly, swift, from behind—swing of a torch, the lone
match, struck, then wind-shut…How far is instinct from a thing
like belief? Not far, apparently. At what point is believing so close
to knowing, that any difference between the two isn’t worth the fuss,
finally? A tamer of wolves tames no foxes, he used to say, as if avoiding
the question. But never meaning to. You broke it. Now wear it broken.

In a note, Phillips says: “I think this poem is circling the idea of refusing to change the self, even when it’s understood as deeply flawed, given that we have to believe in something…”

I love the way the poem circles around the point where belief and knowledge converge into something that feels essential. And I love the short syntax of the final line, the command whose tone is almost reassuring or encouraging rather than distant. I think that tone is the most difficult to capture—the tone of a voice complicit in human intimacy, in the brokenness and resolve of that.

How is staying whole part of coexisting with one’s ongoing brokenness? Why is the temptation for redemption such a strong narrative trope in poetics, and how much more do we risk by refusing it? I don’t have answers. But here are more poems about broken things….

“What’s Broken” by Dorianne Laux

“Broken Things” by GC Waldrep

“Broken Things” by Sara Teasdale

“I Will Keep Broken Things” by Alice Walker

“The God of Broken Things” by Yusef Komunyakaa

“Ode to Broken Things” by Pablo Neruda

And then, as an adage, as a mantra: Carl Phillips’ “Gold Leaf”. One of my favorite poems to share with my teen son when he is dancing with despair. As one must in this world sometimes.

Mutilations

1. Over 5,400 immigrant children have been separated from their families and placed in detention camps or foster care for the crime of crossing a border. And the sun continues to freckle my daughter’s nose, and loosen the shoulders of my son.

2. A plaster Virgin Mary with her arms outstretched sits near a bird bath across the street. Every day I seek the poem in her gaze. Today I find nothing. No poem in any of this. I can’t find words unaccompanied by the knowledge of not doing enough.

3. I sink into Zagakewski’s “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”.

   “You've seen the refugees going nowhere,
   you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.”

4. “You must praise the mutilated world,” Zagajewski says. I praise the ordinary dignities, the bits of life I’ve been given to live—”the gentle light that strays and vanishes / and returns.”

5. There is Matthew Zapruder: “I’m not sure I would say that poets have failed. For better and worse, we have been forced by horrifying and terrifying circumstance into feeling as if the only things that “matter” and are “worth writing about” have to do with generally agreed upon issues of importance. Of course we feel that way: just look at the world.”

6. I look at the world.

7. I look at the world in my head and how it differs from the world others experience.

8. I study the mutilations. The intimately-mutilated include those moments when my son’s rage at the world unmelts entire glaciers, the color of unpoured concrete, the apple core on the nightstand, an aubade for the calm of last week and that long night in bed with Audre Lorde, the look in his eyes across the room and the swell of desire, the fact that the look is still a hinge, a door he knows is open, a crack in the cosmos he recognizes.

9. A tear in the fabric of everything we know is re-cognizing of each other.

10. Try to find the beloved in a gun show stocking up on ammo. This is the most difficult space.

11. But there are other spaces as well. There is Shaindel Beers trying to help local pets find homes and bring comfort to those who are alone. There is Pidgeonholes, providing free online workshops for writers (and I’m so grateful to get to share one), and you won’t believe some of the generosity that is to come in that space. There are free online ebooks from Verso asking questions of the present moment. There are online literary happy hours with incredible readings. There is Reginald Dwayne Betts speaking directly into the silence of US prisons, where countless human beings are trapped in a vector where viruses thrive. There is unbelievable injustice alongside fear and desolation and hope. There is rumor and gossip and cruelty. There is humankind, for better or worse.

"Six Gravel Roads", a CNF from an online journal that expired

Because online journals don’t last forever, and sometimes you want to keep the stories they housed somewhere in the pixel-dust cosmos, here is a flash CNF that was published in boink back in October 2017.

---

Six Gravel Roads

for Alabama

A gravel road. His voice weak from bronchitis. We divide a Lucky Strike between breaths. He pushes words into the sunset's silence.

"I went to homecoming with a girl that wore black combat boots and an orange polyester housedress that wasn't a costume. Just before I got into drugs. Unrelated. But I can't get over how she smelled like detergent, the brittle bleach of her hair, the kiss she refused to give back in the Waffle House parking lot."

My toe itches, distinct pulse and throb of a fire ant bite. Smoke, then scratch. 

I like her name, the way he says it. But I'm not sure the way we say things matters in the dark. 

The sun is down. The bracelet on my wrist is made from the base of an antler. I imagine the mammal's name, the first noun in a story.

*

Gravel road with the boy who mud-rides on Sundays. He calls me "a guy's girl." Later I will realize this is like being "a writer's writer" only even worse. Even more lonely. I had to hurt someone to get to this girl whose pocket-knife cuts hair in graveyards.

Each bump in the red dirt road sprawls like a Jimmy Page solo.

"You're a sport," he assures me.

*

Gravel road with a bottle of Jack. My father remarries an American woman, trained not to raise her voice, not to leave vulgar lipstick marks. She goes into bedrooms and closes the door. A locked click. A house swept clean, dishes ordered-- "I'd do anything for a scream sometimes", anything to loosen the oppressive expanse of well-kept silence. 

My father descends the stairs of his wine cellar. He knows what to find. "It's Brazilian". 

His wife manages the house with her silence. Because she doesn't say mean things, there is nothing to hold against her. No defense against the implications. 

"Don't call me a sport."

Does loving never risk the limits of a mansion? 

I look for boys in the magic of mud splattered across a windshield.

*

Gravel road, my eyes on the derrick. Moving and stopping. This boy and I trying to discern a pattern to the up-down motion, a soluble rhythm. 

His mother picks tomatoes four months of the year. One summer equals seasonal labor. She believes in the value of education. 

"I'm not a book person," he admits. "I get caught between the borders of private and public. I'm smart in the house and shy near the blackboard. Have I told you how it feels to see colors that other people are missing? I see colors. The most important things happen in Spanish."

He asks if he might kiss me. I taste leather and brimstone in the instant before our lips meet on the border of murmurs, si, si.

*

Gravel road with the quarterback who likes European history. Trying things on for a season: sports, hobbies, political bumper-stickers. I'm reading Marcel Pagnol and rollerblading. Three months from now, our high school will named state football champion. 

But not yet. In the earnest-to-gravel moment, he needs to know why I date mostly nerds.

"You're too smart for that," he leans back into the truck seat, laughing. 

He laughs when he talks like nobody's business. "You're the smartest person I know, period. Why date below your looks?"

I think of Sartre and who could be uglier. I think of Sartre's brain as I unbutton my blouse and show him my breasts.

*

Gravel road after road after road. The way nipples harden at high speed. The way a bump chimes like a warning bell inside the willing body. The way you shouldn't. No him. Not here. Not so far from the safe zones of civilization. Not forsaking protection of playgrounds and well-lit condos. 

The highway billboard: We have limits for a reason.

You crave the sharp prick of a turning season. You junk the postcards, the worthy landscapes. You live for the pebbles in your socks, secret rocks, tender cringes, portraits of women that never made it to sepia. 

You keep a collection. Relish each boy, their awkward hands, insatiable hungers. But it's those roads you can't get over. It’s the ache of old gravel you can't give up.

3 poems by Wislawa Szymborska

Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska (2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012) was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature.

“I wouldn't want what happened to me to happen to anybody, because it is something that destroys the spirit and the soul, totally, there is no comparison. To talk about it is hard for me, because it all comes back at once...all that terror, that horror.”

“It's over 25 years now since I was arrested and tortured for treating a wounded revolutionary, but the memories of the pain in torture, the terror and the utter desolation of weeks in solitary confinement, are still with me. I believe it is the same for all of us, the men and women who have been imprisoned, stripped naked, hurt and humiliated. We are left with only a thin veneer over our pain, and the outraged question: how could one human being do this to another, and how could others stand by and watch it happen? What are we doing, when we turn away from other people's suffering? What is that happens in the human heart to block the natural flow of compassion that is an intrinsic part of us?”

Wislawa Szymborska’s words provide a context for her thoughts on torture, for the way she seems to play with the absurdity (and meaninglessness) of fate, placing prison next to romantic love in the context of follies.

---

Tortures

Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain;
it has to eat and breathe the air, and sleep;
it has thin skin, and the blood is just beneath it;
an adequate supply of teeth and fingernails;
its bones can be broken; its joints can be stretched.
In tortures, all this is taken into account.

Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
before the founding of Rome and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are just as they were, only the earth has grown smaller,
and what happens sounds as if it's happening in the next room.

Nothing has changed.
It's just that there are more people,
and beside the old offences new ones have sprung--
real, make-believe, short-lived, and non-existent.
But the howl with which the body answers to them,
was, is and ever will be a cry of innocence
according to the age-old scale and pitch.

Nothing has changed.
Except perhaps the manners, ceremonies, dances.
Yet the movement of hands to shield the head remains the same.
The body writhes, jerks and tries to pull away,
its legs fail, it falls, its knees jack-knife,
it bruises, swells, dribbles and bleeds.

Nothing has changed.
Except for the course of rivers,
the lines of forests, coasts, deserts and glaciers.
Amid those landscapes roams the soul,
disappears, returns, draws nearer, moves away,
a stranger to itself, elusive,
now sure, now uncertain of its own existence,
while the body is and is and is
and has nowhere to go.

A Opinion on the Question of Pornography

There's nothing more debauched than thinking.
This sort of wantonness runs wild like a wind-borne weed
on a plot laid out for daisies.

Nothing's sacred for those who think.
Calling things brazenly by name,
risqué analyses, salacious syntheses,
frenzied, rakish chases after the bare facts,
the filthy fingering of touchy subjects,
discussion in heat--it's music to their ears.

In broad daylight or under cover of night
they form circles, triangles, or pairs.
The partners' age or sex is unimportant.
Their eyes glitter, their cheeks are flushed.
Friend leads friend astray.
Degenerate daughters corrupt their fathers.
A brother pimps for his little sister.

They prefer the fruits
from the forbidden tree of knowledge
to the pink buttocks found in glossy magazines--
all that ultimately simple-hearted smut.
The books they relish have no pictures.
What variety they have lies in certain phrases
marked with a thumbnail or a crayon.

It's shocking, the positions,
the unchecked simplicity with which
one mind contrives to fertilize another!
Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know.

During these trysts of theirs, the only thing that's steamy is the tea.
People sit on their chairs and move their lips.
Everyone crosses only his own legs
so that one foot is resting on the floor
while the other dangles freely in midair.
Only now and then does somebody get up,
go to the window,
and through a crack in the curtains
take a peep out at the street.

[ From View with a Grain of Sand by Wislawa Szymborska, Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh ,”A Harvest Original" Harcourt & Brace & Co. New York 1993 ]

Any Case

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Closer. Farther away.
It happened, but not to you.

You survived because you were first.
You survived because you were last.
Because alone. Because the others.
Because on the left. Because on the right.
Because it was raining. Because it was sunny.
Because a shadow fell.

Luckily there was a forest.
Luckily there were no trees.
Luckily a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A frame, a turn, an inch, a second.
Luckily a straw was floating on the water.

Thanks to, thus, in spite of, and yet.
What would have happened if a hand, a leg,
One step, a hair away?

So you are here? Straight from that moment still suspended?
The net's mesh was tight, but you? through the mesh?
I can't stop wondering at it, can't be silent enough.
Listen,
How quickly your heart is beating in me.

Translated from the Polish by Grazyna Drabik and Sharon Olds ]

Love letter to life

When you read a poem by "Alex Dimitrov” titled, simply, “Love”—and discover exactly what you want to carry forward into the new year. An ode to the loved and the loving. An ode, somehow, to life. A model more exquisite than a mantra.

If you haven’t read this poem yet, it’s available on the American Poetry Review website. And you should read it.

You should print it.

You should sit with it in a park and read portions aloud and share the crumbs you love most with pigeons.

Then (then, o then) you should use it as a model for your own ode to love. You should bring your free-range love gaze to bear on life and poem it. Everything you love is worthy of this exercise, I think. And what a way INto a poem-space…. On that note, here’s mine. With gratitude to Alex…

Love

after Alex Dimitrov, unequivocally

I love the way water feels deeper in darkness.

I love the arousing expectation of a green light--and the unfulfillment blister that follows.

I love how no green is sufficient. How no green can be enough for what we want from a meadow. 

I love the intense pelt of hair on his chest, the rug it makes for my face, a soft place after stubble-kissed exfoliation.

I love people who love opera and sing their favorite arias while doing no-count things in a yard.

I love the rancor of grocery-store lines, the simmering human cauldron.

I love hiding, being hidden, knowing less.

I love bark that takes the shape of canyon to court rivulets of rain down a tree trunk.

I love all the humans I've kissed.

I love the humans I've kissed who still can't forgive me for being less than they imagined. 

I love the kindness of being lesser, still least, never best.

I love the way romanian words unclench the knots in my shoulders. The way my name in a native tongue sounds like a silk dress rather than its business-casual, american version. I need someone to speak the soft vowels in me. Often.

I love the bold lonely cold of the massive magnolia, its towering dankness.

I love the psalmed quiet in a room after the rude house-guest leaves. After the rude house-guest packs their complaints and keen criticisms into a tiny knapsack that you hope they will leave on a park bench where squirrels stay busying bury such tidy parcels of violence. 

I love apologies, tears, forgiveness. I love the reckless audacity of earnest apology. I love the humans who love the world enough to admit when they have wronged it. I love the music this makes of a difficult face.

I love movies with subtitles and saxophones posing as streetlamps. I love the lie we tell a lover to help him sleep. I love pressing my ear against his ear and trying to hear his dreams.

I love the musk ox who approaches its possible mate with overwrought anguish, sniffing the vagina, resting its chin on female buttocks, nosing her neck, scraping her flanks with a foreleg, bellowing. 

I love people who have never played Spite and Malice. I love people who walk away from games in the name of violins. 

I love loosestrife, daisy crowns, dishonest violets. 

I love this whole incarnation, the sensual glut of it. 

I love the accidental clumps of confetti that pass for trash after rain.

I love the resolute energy of thunder--how it leaves us with no one to blame.

I love Rilke and Judas and Georges Sand and Maria Tanase and every fool love betrays with penultimate softness. 

I love the bullet that never leaves the gun, never makes its home inside the end of a human, never busts its bored bravado into a mailbox. I love the bulletin against bullets. I love people who love people enough to say so.

I love the woman who is leaving the man who does not deserve her. I love the moment when she knows this irrevocably and not even Sodom tempts her to look back.

I love George Oppen for saying: Relevant thinking begins with the distrust of language, and speaking of poetry. I love how Oppen was always speaking of poetry, or an entryway to ethics, an opportunity to cross the threshold of convention into hard questions. 

I love two-faced words that embody the tension of the turn. The verb cleave, which means to split, divide and to remain faithful to. I love cleaving and what it keeps of leaving.

I love rubbing opposite things against each other to start a small fire. I love rubbing Alabama against Romania and seeing what friction this brings to the poem. 

I love intense defamiliarization. I love what it wants from the dead.

I love sentiments, their slow tempest, an education. In a time when our emotions have been conscripted into self-help regimens of passive-aggressive positivity poses, sentimentality is the black leather jacket, the bad girl, the beast. I love how she wears her torn leather to the kiddie birthday party. I love how she feels all the wrong and wonder-full things.

I love listening to my kids decipher the world without me. I love overhearing new verbs that change their relation to the room.

I love words. I love words. I love watching old couples tango into fury.

I love mountains. And molehills. And I am some. 

I love how my mother loved life--with fanaticism and shamelessness. I love how she was never afraid to show it. Never afraid to raise her arms to the sky and say, Look at this! Breath it in! Can you feel the air living inside you?

I love a joy so sober and direct than no god or drug or drink could claim credit for its presence. 

I love friends who love me when I'm crying. I love friends who cry. I love people who aren't afraid of tears or wet towels or broken sinks.

I love knowing that the good we do for each other exists even in the silence of ingratitude. I love that pride has no actual muscle, only the flicker of a flex in the mirror.

I love the silver mermaid necklace and Coney Island and the things I have done to keep myself free of the the guilt of the fathers, the burdens of the sons.

I love the undevastated sanctus I am writing, living, thinking while a cockroach does his thing on the porch.

I love that Czeslaw Milosz ends his “Ars Poetica” with an injunction: "as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly, / under unbearable duress and only with the hope / that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument."

I love knowing that what is possible will not redeem us. I love knowing that what we choose may be held against us. I love knowing that the poem, in its Great Hopingness, wants a dinner from the ghost.

I love the fact that history is not a robot and anything could happen, including kindness.

I love mystics and monks who live in tiny towers like princesses of the lo-fi fabulous.

I love lingering on the threshold of a reminiscence bump and rediscovering my favorite jeans.

I love words. I love words. I love diacritics and all little ornaments of unamerican accents.

I love hiding, being hidden, knowing less.

A handful of poems that fascinate me

This is not a list.

What resembles a list and walks like a list and talks like a list is actually a small, knotted knapsack that I need to imagine. Or a child’s hand.

My child’s hand or a knapsack I need to carry alongside the heavier baggage of adulting.

A mudpie-baker or a knapsack packed with a few poems I’m sneaking into the new year as both inspiration and a source of fascination.

Just a few of the poems I’ve been re-reading recently…. among so many bright, bright things, and not enough time or memory to share them all.

Not a list. Not the child itself. Not a constellation.

-

“World Parent” by Gboyega Odubanjo (Wildness)
For its entry-point, and the way stories of origin are always woven into stories of exile or immigration or displacement. For the profound and breathtaking alienation that is rooted, somehow—and still.
“All the Nigerian aunties and uncles are holidaying in Dubai.
They’re eating only Nigerian food and talking only to their drivers.
They’re posing as they give thanks, WhatsApp’ing everybody.”

“Altar Call” by Khaty Xiong (The Spectacle)
Because the way Khaty uses language toes the borderlands of sacred and profane and captivates me like an ash print on a child’s forehead, the mark left by others to give meaning to loss we still can’t inhabit. Which also bumps against the absence of homelands, Southeast Asian diasporas, and Hmong peoples.

“On Faith” by Shara Lessly (The Gettysburg Review)
For the soft pitch of the rhyme scheme & repetition…and the awe. “There is no map for how.”

“Polaroids of God From My Eleventh Summer” by Emily Borgmann (Waxwing)
”finally oh finally I prayed without assignment,
that morning the first time my head felt fit for my body,
what was done to it, the answer to prayer is
when you first know the size of your own pain, stop asking.”

“Moral Inventory” by Ruth Awad (Wildness)
” I once had a body
that wasn’t a body—it was a voice
in a god’s mouth. It was the holy vowel.
Oh, animal, I thank you.”

“Mixtape for My Twenties” by Phillip Metres (American Poetry Review)
Because who isn’t missing a cento of song lyrics from their 20’s as part of their corpus? And who else to give us such perfect permission to do it?

“Border Control Agent Will Not Complete His Shift” by Roy G. Guzmán (Hayden’s Ferry Review)
Because it broke things.

“The Poets Are Dying” by Brenda Shaughnessy (The New Yorker)
A model from seam to seam.

“Terms of Agreement” by Mary Biddinger (Sugarhouse Review)
”None of them knew I was surrounded by couch
cushions, regarding a sepia portrait of a cherished ex like it was newfound
// currency.”

“Indictment With Icarus” by Emily Skaja (Vinyl)
“ Hello you
are a vessel of vessels.
Hold your wings like the oars of a boat.”

“Science and Industry” by Randi Clemens (Pidgeonholes)
”In this exhibit, these walls,
this body: the unborn curl.
I trace my fingers along
them, the unspined, unheld,
unseeing behind viewing glass.”

“Origins of Violence” by Jenny George (from The Dream of Reason)
Because it is raw and pure in the most devastating way.

“Whiteness” by Michael Metiever (Sugarhouse Review)
For the challenge and its attendant complicity in the turn at the end. Powerful.

“this is a trans poem about swans” by Danielle Rose (Pidgeonholes)
 “this is a trans poem about swans & i desperately wish for it to be beautiful / but beauty does not escape & become a silent parking lot / in an emergency it cannot be trusted to shuffle quickly toward the nearest exit” 

And last but not least, I have been flummoxed over which poem to include from Sara Borjas’ formidable poetry collection, Heart Like A Window, Mouth Like A Cliff (Noemi Press). The whole book is a wonder of poeming, a beautiful beautiful unbidden glory. If you purchase a copy, you will not regret it. Not for a minute. I do not know the poet personally, and I’ve never met her, but if you purchase this book and decide to use it to teach a class, please find Sara on twitter and let her know. My opinion (and my fascination with this book) is rooted in nothing more extravagant than my life as a reader, lover of language, admirer of Pocha-Xicana poems. But if I have to choose a poem, I will choose the one that speaks for so many of us who cannot yet write this poem—and for the countless humans who will need to write this poem, or its sister, or its cousin.— “I See My Rapist’s Daughter” by Sara Borjas. From the aforementioned collection.

Questions for poetry revision

Inauthenticity appears in the belief that one can attend a costume party disguised as one's self.

This is the thought I measure myself against when entering the room of revisions. When straddling the multiverse between poet and persona, or the mask adopted by the author that offers a public version of the author's self, a distorted version of that self, or a fictional character.

To some degree, persona protects you by creating a distance between the voice on the page and the person living a life, failing. Ideally, revision is where the interaction between persona and poet sharpens into voice. But it’s still gruesome and difficult for me, still the most disorienting part of process. I need prodding, prompting, and encouragement when it comes to paring down and deciding what I want from the poem—or what the poem wants from the world. And how. .

So I’m sharing a few questions I give myself in revising, followed by revision resources crafted by others.

Questions for the Poet

1. Does the metaphor carry its weight? Does it feel accidental or sloppy?

2. Have you followed your fascination like a monk into the soul's monstrosity?

3. Are you skimming a pretty surface?

4. Are you writing what haunts you, even if it makes you look bad?

5. Are you writing to look good? How is that interesting or relevant to others?

6. Do the words link arms like drunks on a city street, their song tangling, rising suddenly like an accident that absolves us of money for the damned?

7. Are you wearing a costume or taking one off?

8. Did you drop freedom fries on the floorboard and hope to get away with the untouched cliche?

9. Are you all-in on glibness? Why?

10. Does your anger at the world include your role in its sustenance?

11. Is your gaze ableist or boutique-hearted?

12. Does dependency seek to present itself as the poem's golden glove?

13. Why are you whispering?

14. Why are you shouting?

15. Where do you stand in relation to the stadium?

16. Are you writing in hopes of rousing or arousing the audience? (If your mind immediately grabbed to the sexual connotation of “arousing'“, that might be a separate thing worth poeming.)

17. Would the poem still matter if you walked past a magnificent mural that said the same thing? 

18. Did you get what you wanted from the endnote? If so, did you brocade a complicated lie just to get there?

19. Is there a sequel?

20. Is there a statement when what you meant was less stable, more querulous, closer to the marvel of a question?

21. Are you subverting a form effectively? If so, why? If not, why are you clinging to the idea of form for this poem? At what point does changing the rules become a different game? What is the significance?

22. Did you remove an adverb because someone told you that good poems don’t have adverbs? Why did you believe them when so many poems you admire suffer from allegation of adverbing? If you are Catholic about adverbs, consider being a lapsed Catholic for the poem.

23. If the poem is a room, what is the background music? Is it distracting?

24. Is it a prose poem? What are you getting from its lineation? What is the poetic line in this poem—and why?

25. What makes it feel finished? It is connected to another poem? Is it the start of a series or something that stands alone?

Ultimately, I don’t believe in finished “products”—I believe in the process of poeming. Consumerism conditions us to think in terms of products, to write for a market, to manage expectations with an eye to sales. But the poem doesn’t give a damn about sales. The poem may be published in one form only to reappear in a collected works with different line breaks, syntax, white space.

The question of when a poem is “finished” is the most difficult question for me as both a writer and a reader. I think Danish poet and writer Inger Christensen lays the stakes out best with a simple question:

"Is it at all possible to learn to write poems in a way that will make them seem important to read out loud to a cockroach?"

I leave you with peace, love, life—and a few more wanton butterflies to chase down the road….

The Condition of Secrecy by Inger Christensen (New Directions Books)

“Trust Poetry: An interview with Ada Limon” (BOMB Magazine)

Nick Ripatrazone’s “In Praise of Poems That End With Questions” (The Millions)

Excerpt from Hadestown by Kim Triedman (Talking Writing)

“The Art of Negotiation” by Meghan Privitello (The Volta)

Sometimes I kiss my idols

Like this poem by Czeslaw Milosz, written in Warsaw, 1944. One of those poems that walks with me.

And today I was fumbling through another project, needing a breath, a step back from it, and what better way to stroll than to copy Milosz’s stride? It’s one of my favorite ways to stretch into spaces I don’t know how to write. To try on a voice and see and what happens.

And now back to the page….

For Laura, Who Is Too Hard On Herself

And for all my poet friends who struggle with loving themselves in a world that sells us self-hatred under the guise of self-help, that prices us out of love, in a song we internalize as self-blame, in a guilt that is both useless and irrelevant.

The third day of nightmares with mom

We talk about how to love
the dead without killing them
again, and again in our
minds, with our mouths.

I swear we will love you
as you were, and not as we
made you in our wishes
for the average
accommodation, that
american sitcom mom.

We will love you without
erasing the unpopular
hysteria of your embrace

or the final foaming
followed by silence—
and those sirens
we couldn’t hear
across an ocean.

That nothing
did not spare us.