Fatimah Asghar
Further Resources
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Outer space
A poet's fascination with the sky might seem pretty cliche, but these poets prove something as old as time can continue to offer infinite invitations for inspiration to those of us who choose to look up.
View playlistThe Day After the Election I Did Not Go Outside
A selection of poems against hate and injustice in the time of Trump, most drawn from online journals that have made a point to publish political poetry in the months since the election. Journals include: Heavy Feather Review; Yes, Poetry; Love's Executive Order; Banango Street; DIAGRAM; Pinwheel; BOAAT; Dryland; Poetry; and The New Inquiry. The playlist draws its title from Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib's poem of the same name.
View playlistThe Second Person
These are just a few poems that make clever, heartrending, enigmatic, and startling uses of the second person. I am fascinated by you--the second person pronoun--because of its capaciousness and changeability. There is the you that refers just to you, the singular you; but then there's the plural you, the group of you, the masses of all of you; there's the you you that is all of us or all of them at once; there's the you that is actually a part of me. I love second person address because it seems to lay bare the communicative thrust behind all acts of poetry. To invoke you in my poem calls attention to the fact that--whether you are out there and listening or not, whether you are specific or general, living or dead, human or nonhuman--you exist, I remember you, and I am trying to reach you.
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