Kenna O'Rourke

Aliens, Jesuses, bacteria

Kenna O'Rourke

Kenna O’Rourke reviews three poetry collections from the past two years: Proof Something Happened by Tony Trigilio, Spooks by Stella Wong, and Palm-Lined with Potience by Basie Allen. About Palm-Lined with Patience: Small round symbols and sweeping dotted lines appear throughout Basie Allen’s debut collection, tracing out palm readings or perhaps just guiding the eye to the poems’ juiciest inscrutable moments. Allen indicates that some pages should be torn out or flipped to be read fully, mirroring an activist’s disruption tactics: “I am not ashamed of inconvenience / and I promise to ruin everything,” he writes in one of several poems condemning NYC gentrifiers’ destruction of neighborhoods.

Worship the change

Kenna O'Rourke

Kenna O’Rourke reviews three authors’ debut collections: Hot with the Bad Things by Lucia LoTempio; All the Gay Saints by Kayleb Rae Candrilli; and america, MINE by Sasha Banks.

Clap, baby: like this

Kenna O'Rourke

Kenna O’Rourke takes another look at three 2018 poetry titles: Clap for Me That’s Not Me by Paola Capó-García, Baby, I Don’t Care by Chelsey Minnis, and Don’t Let Them See Me Like This by Jasmine Gibson.

Kenna O’Rourke takes another look at three 2018 poetry titles.

In hollows

Kenna O'Rourke

Kenna O’Rourke reviews three poetry titles featuring dysfunctional relationships: Red Mother by Laurel Radzieski, small siren by Alexandra Mattraw, and Without Protection by Gala Mukomolova.

Strange definitions

Kenna O'Rourke

Three capsule reviews of weird vocabularies: Cannibal by Safiya Sinclair, Encyclopédie of the Common & Encompassing by Allison Campbell, and Confessional Sci-fi: A Primer by Kirsten Kaschock.

Three capsule reviews of weird vocabularies: Cannibal by Safiya Sinclair, Encyclopédie of the Common & Encompassing by Allison Campbell, and Confessional Sci-fi: A Primer by Kirsten Kaschock.

The gifts her ancestors gave

The Women’s March and black erasure

“One marcher from Chicago, Cheryl Thomas-Porter, summed up the communitarian, participatory, and engaged nature of the march in an interview with CNN: ‘This march is us. We made this march. … The march is the contribution of every single woman of African descent.’” Above: marchers gathered on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on October 25, 1997, for the Million Woman March in Philadelphia.

Feminista Jones opened her speech at the January 21, 2017, Philadelphia Women’s March by reminding the crowd that the erasure of black women’s voices by white feminism is antithetical to feminism itself: “I am a black feminist, and they need to have at least one of them in this space, cause y’all don’t have feminism without us.”

Feminista Jones opened her speech at the January 21, 2017, Philadelphia Women’s March by reminding the crowd that the erasure of black women’s voices by white feminism is antithetical to feminism itself: “I am a black feminist, and they need to have at least one of them in this space, cause y’all don’t have feminism without us.” Jones — a Philadelphia-based activist, social worker, and writer whose work revolves around poverty alleviation, the fight against hunger, sex positivity, and mental health advocacy — had been early to point out that

Voices, lives, and monsters

Kenna O'Rourke

Our first capsule reviews of 2017: Voice’s Daughter of a Heart Yet to Be Born by Anne Waldman, Staying Alive by Laura Sims, and Sympathetic Little Monster by Cameron Awkward-Rich.

Our first capsule reviews of 2017 feature three recent poetry titles.

September picks: Duplan, Szymaszek, and Bartlett

Kenna O'Rourke

2016 titles from Anaïs Duplan, Stacy Szymaszek, and Sarah Bartlett reviewed in brief this month.

Three great 2016 titles from women poets reviewed in brief this month.

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