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Poetry in the Parks (And Everywhere Else)
Poetry in the Parks (And Everywhere Else)
What is the State of Poetry Today?
Poetry in the News
Poets are in the news again! US Poet Laureate Ada Limón announced two new projects for her second term. The first is an anthology of nature poems, and the second is an installation of poetry in seven national parks. In other poetry news, queer and non-binary poet Andrea Gibson has been named Colorado’s next poet laureate. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, Drake has recently published a poetry collection. Maggie Smith, who went viral with her 2016 poem “Good Bones,” has a new book out. For all the chaos of the last decade, poetry has been sitting on the sidelines with resilience and patience. Kaveh Akbar, who worked alongside Ocean Vuong and Dominique Townsend to write original poetry for the 2018 Netflix film The Kindergarten Teacher, summed up the state of poetry quite well in a 2021 interview in The Paris Review: “I think it’s doing great.” “Great” may be a fraught, even loaded word. The state of poetry is sometimes great, sometimes complicated, sometimes nothing short of necessary. In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ilya Kaminsky’s “We Lived Happily During the War” made the rounds online. Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb” reinvigorated a national interest in poetry (as inaugural poems tend to do) and almost immediately after, boring people with bad taste and a hatred of fun sought to ban it. Kathy Fish’s prose poem “Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild” is shared on social media weekly, or almost as many times as there is a mass shooting in this country. Poetry is always in the news. Poetry is the news. Ada Limón’s leadership as Poet Laureate is encouraging. Putting poetry in the parks may not be on par with putting poetry on the bus, but it reaches for the same goal: To place poetry where we encounter one another, and ourselves, at our most curious.In the meantime, I hope you keep writing. The world needs it.Peace,Keene ShortEditor-in-ChiefAtticus Review
THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS
BOOK REVIEW
"Mixing genres and experimenting with her prose heightens the sense of movement, of restlessness, of doubt. How can Lang square her deep love for Philippe with the conflicts inherent in their marriage?"
PLACES WE LEFT BEHIND: A MEMOIR-IN-MINIATURES
a book review by Julie Zuckerman
ISSUE FIVE SPOTLIGHT
ALPHABET OF LONGINGby Phil Goldstein
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