#mag gabbert

[bluewillowmoon]

“Here is a problem with love that is also a problem with poems: how often they wish to speak plainly, yet don’t.”

— Mag Gabbert, from “Pentimento,” Poetry (November 2024)

[kitchen-light]

In your interview with Essay Daily in 2017, you talked about the lyric and essay genre-modes in terms of the lyric’s ability to render simultaneous yet separate selves within a first-person “I” speaker, and of the essay’s connectedness to argument and citational exchange. Two different aspects of those genres/modes also came to mind for me as I read your work; the first is the lyric’s relationship to leaps or gaps (for example, in “A Braided Heart,” Brenda Miller describes the lyric essay in terms of its “tendency toward fragmentation that invites the reader into those gaps […] a form that is interactive, alive, full of new spaces in which meaning can germinate”).

Mag Gabbert, from “Cameron Awkward-Rich | Interview by Mag Gabbert”, Underblong, Issue 4 

[bostonpoetryslam]

When other awful things happen, I hear an old friend say: there will be an/other side again, and yet I can’t help but wonder if both sides are the same, just this one flipped image above and below any still water’s surface (notice the face in surface, a lake mirroring yours in it, how it echoes ache, ache before the eyes blue away).

Mag Gabbert, “Tattoo,” published in the Paris Review

[lifeinpoetry]

         as if you never realized                    bleach would leave

this blemish on my sheet          or that your handprint                    would strike me through steam every          morning like the haloed                    vacancies of our bodies          once we’d risen                    from the blankets

glowed like snow angels          which are the opposite                    of angels

— Mag Gabbert, from “Bleach,” published in Glass

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

"Poem/Poem Time"

Saw the following on X and thought it would be fun to YES this offer:

Alexandra Naughton on X: "if you write a poem for me, I’ll write a poem for you. you must post it to the timeline, however." / X

It also felt like a decent opportunity to try a response to Mag Gabbert's 'breakup' poetry form -

Sooooo -

As I had already discovered - this form is hard to do WELL. The starting point sentence is (ofc!) extremely important and there's a proper, subtle skill in mining out word/phrases that ADD anything to that start-point.

Not sure that any of these efforts really did the job - and again, unsurprisingly, I think the third attempt was the best. [I broke the format a bit by recapping what the poem supposedly said, below it.]

Poem 3:

If you write, I must / if I write, you must / if I must - you must / if you must - I must / poem line / poem time / poem poem time!

Poem 2:

A poem line / however you write a poem / how you write time / I'll time it / write to the line / how you poem, you must post me / write for me / write forever...

Poem 1:

If you must - post the time / you must however write it / as a poem / a poem / a poem for me / a poem for you.

[the-final-sentence]

But they don't have a relationship.

Mag Gabbert, from "Anti-Sonnet"

[dig-with-it]

Baby

I don't think about you in an iredescent way. I don't ever look for you in the night. I do not imagine your endlessness. When I think about you, I think about myself. And of other real things, like dawn on the crumpled sheet, or the mountains. The balance between fear and believing in things. You are not a wish. You are a black and white photo of water, hidden somewhere in my room.

— Mag Gabbert

[6peaches]

Mag Gabbert - Fever

I cannot make lunch today I need a tissue I cannot go to the store I cannot walk the dogs I am drained look at me I am bloodless I am silver I need a tissue I cannot go to the show tonight I cannot wear a sequined dress I cannot slink across the floor I cannot drop like coins from a purse I cannot scatter brightly I cannot drop off the dry cleaning or go to the meeting or meet up for coffee I cannot change I cannot make change I need a tissue I need a tissue I need a tissue they are coming out like scarves and then doves

- Fever by Mag Gabbert