Reading Archive
Truth & Dread: Why Poetry Still Matters & The Risk of (Too Much) Empathy
If the question is whether most Americans are reading poetry, the answer is—I won’t sugarcoat it or fudge the numbers—“no.” My mother doesn’t read poetry, unless it’s mine. Does yours?
How to Be an Explorer: Field Notes from NYC
The Explorer’s Club was founded in New York City in 1904 by Arctic explorers in a grand building with a placard and serious gates. If you stalk their website as I do, you will see several events a year that are open to non-Explorers.
Against Solace: Interrogation in the Work of Three Trans Poets
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about interrogating gender in poetry, and I’m especially interested in the work of three trans poets that use a wild arsenal of strategies to unsettle notions of gender and sexuality.
Three Poetry Chapbooks You Must Read
This month, I review three poetry chapbooks from three different women’s voices that are important, that you should read.
“No Were There But” : Marwa Helal’s “Poem to Be Read From Right to Left”
In “Poem to Be Read From Right to Left,” recently published in the newest issue of Winter Tangerine, Helal comes up with a new poetic form: “the Arabic.”
The Weird Nineteenth Century
The reputation of the nineteenth century novel tends to precede its reading. By this I mean: few readers come to first contact with the likes of JANE EYRE, MIDDLEMARCH, or TESS without some established prejudice for or against the genre, usually in the milieu of a middle or high
The Female Gaze and the Same Old Songs
I recently went with my husband to a concert. The artist we saw writes gut-wrenching songs, and he and his band put on a great show. But I got restless about half way through. “It’s just so masculine,” I said to my husband, and not long after that the
A Gift of Sorts
This story starts in the tall-walled house of a local poet. Aluminum foil trays of lasagna. Iceberg lettuce. Wool ties, snug dresses. We are all here together to celebrate the visitation of the poet Edward Hirsch. He has just read from his most recent collection, titled GABRIEL, an elegy
Space: Renegotiating Rhetorical Boundaries
In the aftermath of this election, it’s undeniable this country is a contested space, and that its citizens are hungry for new language to describe its landscape and reshape its boundaries. Within contemporary poetry, many writers of color are responding to this desire by renegotiating the rhetoric of the
Beyond Sympathy: Seeing Myself in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s THE SYMPATHIZER
Jacqueline Woodson, author of the National Book Award-winning Brown Girl Dreaming, said, "I think it’s so important for readers to see mirrors of themselves in books and to see that the people who wrote the books look like them, so that they can understand their own power and ability.”