Paisley Rekdal's Book Listed As a NPR's "Books We Love"
"Paisley Rekdal has always been a breathtakingly ambitious poet, and this is her most ambitious book so far—a work of seamlessly blended poetry and history....Rekdal traces and grieves the sorrowful politics that link the building of the transcontinental railroad and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 ('Congress had to pass an act/ to make the building stop'). She excavates an American shame that has yet to be reckoned with, though this extraordinary book, which finds a fresh purpose for poetry as a reliquary of evidence, perhaps makes a start."
via NPR |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Petra Kuppers on Language as Form
"In the case of 'Split/Screen,' the magic structuring principle of 'fourteen' hovered in my brain. The sonnet is a device I often use, not necessarily as a formal frame but as a couplet structure to hold against my freewrite. This offers a scaffold toward something that can spread out on the page and take up space in the world." |
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