So psyched to see my book in this Yale Review piece by Steph Burt—a long review essay that focuses on first books and identity politics/poetics in 2017. The essay reads like the most serious yet least pretentious conversation about poetry you could have with a writer friend. Honored to be in the staggering company of Kaveh Akbar, Raena Shirali, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Ari Banias, Courtney Kampa, Molly McCully Brown, and Blunt Research Group.
Thanks to Burt for engaging with the high stakes of what these first books are doing, and for highlighting what each poet does well, does idiosyncratically, does out of both necessity and wild imagination (which are maybe the same, sometimes).
Each section is also honest about shortcomings, but always in a way that makes me contemplate this weird art. There's a big difference between imposing one's aesthetics and seeing how someone else's might (need to) be pushed further. The latter is criticism. I don't always agree, but I know it's coming from the right place. Anyway, time for me to stop reviewing the review. Read it for yourself.
*
OK but this has to be my favorite passage; Steph Burt telling the god honest truth about my poems mhm.















