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The Year of the Femme
Playlist by Cassie DonishCassie Donish’s poems do several kinds of work—at first they ask the big questions, like whether the Gordian Knot or Mobius Strip of gender can ever be set free from its binds of paradox, or where precisely does the crux of the sex/gender question live in us? The answers haven’t landed, and the poet allows the unknown to take up space... Donish sends their heartbroken and passionate voice into the world and the world catches it. Soon that voice is wreathed, garlanded, full of pollen and rain and clover and indigo—everything further broken, messy, lovely, loving, wild, and utterly itself, and it’s in that state that this voice, lush yet precise, is then thrown to us, the reader sighing with pleasure and pathos. A bold and redemptive truth is found here, not reliant on answers for its power and meaning. —Brenda Shaughnessy
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Featured on December 2, 2019
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Playlist by Tommy PicoThis book was all about finding some kind of nutrition, in relationships or in art or in stuffing yr face so... I hope u feel full! —Tommy Pico
View playlist to continue readingFeatured on November 25, 2019
Sestinas Bust My Brain (to Start with)
Playlist by Rosebud Ben-OniContemporary poetry has made me fall in love with poetic forms, even the very complicated and uncompromising form that is The Sestina. While it makes so many demands on you as a poet, there is something to be said for those who make more than music of its many rules, who make you realize that the strictest of poetics forms are less about restriction and more about innovation, craft and the repetitious, incanting magic of end words. While I will always be a free verse poet at heart, I'm grateful how poetic forms have challenged me by teaching me a more urgent kind of diligence while having a stronger sense of "direction." These are some of my favorite sestinas, which I regularly teach in workshop, which often win over the most free-verse-loving of students.
View playlist to continue readingFeatured on November 18, 2019
Para Ana
Playlist by Katie EbbittPara Ana is an epistolary chapbook dedicated to the Brazilian poet Ana Cristina Cesar. Comprised of standalone poems and fragmentary missives, Para Ana is a fugue on "sending", a letter that is read by everyone except the 'dear'est.
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