My collection "Black Pastoral" seeks to hold both the brutality and the beauty that simultaneously characterize Black folks' relationship with the natural world. In using the epithalamion, a form written in celebration of a wedding, to depict the Middle Passage, during which many enslaved Africans leapt from captors' ships into the ocean below, I hoped to hold to the light a drop of such beauty awash in the brutal waters of our shared history.
Ariana Benson on "Epithalamion in the Wake" |
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"Review of Sarah Ghazal Ali's Theophanies"
"Ultimately, I am enraptured by Theophanies’ ability to present a faith so uninterested in grace. A gritty faith that interlocks generations of legendary women, from Hajar to Sarah to Maryam, a faith that allowed those women to survive and allows the spirits of other women, like Nabra Hussanen of the poem 'When Nabra Hassanen Wakes Up In Jannah,' written after Hussanen was murdered in Virginia in 2017 in an incident widely considered to be a hate crime, to rest."
via CANTHIUS |
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What Sparks Poetry:
David Keplinger on "The Ice Age Wolf That Love Is"
"Dogor was discovered in 2019 beneath receding permafrost in this coldest region of Russia. The delight I felt (beholding his small face, seemingly glistening wet nose, whiskers, closed puppy-eyes, tufts of hair and preserved tongue) was tempered by a certain grief, the recognition that it was climate change that had made this vision of our deep past possible." |
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2024 Able Muse Contests
Submit Now
WRITE PRIZE (poetry & fiction): $500 each + publication
Final Judges: Hailey Leithauser (poetry), Nina Schuyler (fiction). $15 entry: deadline: March 15, 2024
BOOK AWARD (poetry): $1000 + book publication
Final Judge: Timothy Steele. $25 entry: deadline: March 31, 2024 |
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