"Birdsong" is part of a manuscript-in-progress that thinks deeply on the alphabet. As an abecedarian, the poem uses a fixed sequence of letters as its container, and so moves in content toward questions of etymology, philology, and—as "word" opens to "world"—ontology. Writing this poem felt like an act of discovery; I did my best to leave that experience transcribed in the finished piece.
Daniel Schonning on "Birdsong" |
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"Four Poets Write New Histories"
"'Every poem is the story of itself,' Smith writes. The stories her poems tell share a number of preoccupations—history and grief, motherhood and mythology, art and identity, internal life and outer space—that traverse her four previous collections, excerpted here along with a section, 'Riot,' made up of new poems."
via THE NEW YORK TIMES |
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What Sparks Poetry:
A Short List of Books Ilya Kaminsky Loved in 2021
"Kevin Young's music can be erotic, it can be surreal, it can be serious, revelatory, or playful, or all of this at once: 'Where the train once rained / through town / like a river, where the water // rose in early summer / & froze come winter— / where the moon // of the outhouse shone / its crescent welcome, / where the heavens opened // & the sun wouldn't quit— / past the gully or gulch / or holler or ditch // I was born.' Stones is a gorgeous book. No one writes like Kevin Young. Frankly, no one can." |
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