Hazen Discusses the Comforts of Poetry in Uncertain Times
In a guest post on The Bookworm, Elizabeth Hazen, author of "Girls Like Us," discusses the power of reading and writing poetry in uncertain times.
In a guest post for the small book review blog, The Bookworm, Elizabeth Hazen discusses the role poetry occupies in her life during uncertain times as with the 2016 inauguration and #MeToo movement, and now the COVID 19 epidemic. She also explains her relationship to her new collection Girls Like Us.
While in her first collection, Chaos Theories, she used "a filter through which to explore my subjects allow[ing her] the distance to be objective," in Girls Like Us Hazen "[didn't' allow [herself] quite as much distance from the subject," adding that:
"After the public discourse about sexual assault and misogyny blew up with Trump’s inauguration and with the onset of #MeToo, many old hurts resurfaced for me, as they did for so many women I know. I had to write through all of this and realized that many poems I had been working on were really about what it is to be a woman in world that expects us to be so many contradictory things. The process of writing these poems, though painful at times, was incredibly empowering, and it is my hope that readers will share in that sense of empowerment."
Read the full blog post HERE
And don't forget, EVERY. SINGLE. BOOK. in the ASP catalog is half-price through the month of may!
Talking Jazz and Rock with Poet Reuben Jackson (Laura Ritchie)
Author and music educator Lauren Ritchie sat down with ASP’s Reuben Jackson this week to talk jazz with the man himself. Reuben’s music credentials are long and impressive, from curating the Duke Ellington Collection at the Smithsonian to hosting a weekly Jazz radio show for NPR Vermont, to his poetry which takes inspiration from and frequently comments on the American Jazz idiom. Listen to or read the interview…
Rose Solari talks with Acclaimed Poet David Gewanter
This Sunday, October 21, at 8 p.m., ASP’s Rose Solari is reading with acclaimed poet, essayist, editor, and professor David Gewanter in a new poetry reading series at Second Story Books, 2000 P Street NW, Washington DC. In preparation for their reading, Rose talked with David about his work, particularly his most recent collection, Fort Necessity. Here is a part of their discussion…
Featured Audio: “Margaret in Oxford,” a Reading by Rose Solari
Robert Olen Butler loved Rose’s debut work of fiction for its sense of the eternity. This is one of many reasons why all of Rose Solari’s work must be treasured. It plays on life motifs, flips, forms, and languors upon the archetypes formed of human experience. We have spoken previously of Rose’s reverence for the myth in modern day. We even looked before at A Secret Woman’s sense of itself as being both poem and novel…