Phrasis
Xu’s politics are more apparent than those of some other poets, adding satisfying layers to the work, and handling the tension of multilingualism in thrilling ways.
Letter from Nine Mile
Outside my window, a crane breaks / the last jigsaws of ice. Morning comes, / it always does, the rabbits scurry down / their narrow holes to live their underground lives.
Impossible Map out of the Basement
What have I // transferred to you, dear listener? Is this / our odyssey together, or have I hitched you // to my now-naked side? I am sorry. Maybe.
Addendum
How their faces were cut out / then cinched in the center with a drawstring // And how all my ideas, dilemmas, doubts / I held most dear would be erased in five days’ time
From Destruction of Man
with the wainscoting of the field / peopled with crapped out rigs / just some boil wheel ass half implements improving / towards a satisfaction the bog bug bites on / one defamed mange face wanderer
Playing Monster :: Seiche
Narratives of trauma seem especially marked by the uncanny or unreal. The traumatized self is haunted by impressions of past harm that shiver out of view, appearing in the present as new panic and dread. In remembering old pain, we experience a partial failure of sight and long for sharper vision.
Marvels of the Invisible
Molberg refuses to parse the usual polarities of religion and the natural world. She seeks to bring the two together, searching for the places and ideas that link them. . . .
Instead of Dying
Winner of the 2017 Colorado Prize for Poetry, selected by Susan Howe Selected by Susan Howe for the 2017 Colorado Prize for Poetry, Instead of Dying, Lauren Haldeman’s second book, invokes spiders and senators, physicists and aliens—decodes the world of death with a powerful mix of humor, epiphany, and agonizing grief. In the spirit of […]
Silencer
He seems afraid that the world has become inured to the sickeningly steady stream of murders: “You see human / interest piece, sunny & rounding out the evening news / where I see eclipsed casket.” In the face of such violence, remaining silent is not an option.
Late in the Empire of Men
“Before I was a man I was a man / made of pixels,” Christopher Kempf writes in “Oregon Trail,” a poem early in his prize-winning debut. Like many in the collection, Kempf’s ode to the titular computer game is about coming of age in the Information Age, where writing entails virtual violence. . . .”