I’m fascinated by inheritances—what do we know we inherit, and what inheritances are invisible, even silenced? How are we encouraged (by family, by ourselves) to be complicit in the silence? Growing up, I had (and still have) many questions about my family and our relationship to land and community. Add to that, growing up queer. In some ways, “Cleave” might be a coming-out poem. In some ways, it’s trying to ask questions that, often, are still unanswered.
Lucien Darjeun Meadows on "Cleave" |
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"Short Conversations with Poets: Maureen N. McLane"
"Romantic poets model for us, or at least for me, the possibility of rigorous, difficult hope; of space-clearing negations; of song and critique; and of aesthetic emergence: such a poetry 'should forever be becoming and never be perfected.' That’s an openness, a venturesomeness, I respond to in contemporary poets as well."
via MCSWEENEY'S |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Jeevika Verma on Reginald Dwayne Betts' Felon
"He claims the label prison gives him—felon—and says, look, I did make mistakes, and now I am dealing with the consequences. But look, also, at how we lend ourselves to the system. How we dehumanize the incarcerated man. How every time he tries to love, we remind him of when he didn’t—'What name for / this thing that haunts, this thing we become.'" |
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