TLR Delivers a Stellar Review of GIRLS LIKE US
Michael Quinn of TLR traces the arc of Elizabeth Hazen's new collection "The Last Girl" and discovers the ways in which "Absence asserts permanence."
A new review this week from The Literary Review traces the arc of Elizabeth Hazen's Girls Like Us from a "[focus] primarily on the self, [to] poems [that] are gradually consumed by a responsibility to others, primarily through motherhood and its all-consuming need to provide for and protect."
Motherhood, womanhood, girlhood, addiction, and identity all present themselves in different ways throughout this arc, and Brooklyn-based reviewer Michael Quinn deals deftly with each of them, analyzing bits and pieces of many poems which tell the story of Girls Like Us rather than lingering too long on one or two images. In doing so, Quinn is able to depict Girls Like Us as a book that refuses pigeon-holing and which dares to be complicated and often difficult.
This dedication is evident in Quinn's description of the cover of the collection, a collage by Lindsay Fleming, "Near the girl’s feet, a book lies on the ground with its pages blown open. An adventure awaits: dangerous, scary, exciting, confusing." And, in a more detailed way, it is evident in Quinn's short but revealing analyses of the Hazen's Diagnosis cycle:
'“Diagnosis I,” “Diagnosis II,” and “Diagnosis III” respectively depict three scenes. In the first, an unwell woman is assured by her male doctor that despite her undiagnosed source of pain, there’s nothing wrong with her. In the second, a young virgin’s group of male tormentors becomes her booze-supplying seducers. In the third, the past of a woman at midlife is thrown into relief when a drunk aggressively hits on her. “Girls like / you, he repeated, leaving me / a blank to fill.”'
Grace Cavalieri’s Interview on Midday with Tom Hall
Grace Cavalieri stopped by WYPR last week for an interview on “Midday” with Tom Hall. The Poet Laureate and author of ASP’s Other Voices, Other Lives, mused on her life and work, meditating on the loss of her late husband, and reading from her deep poetry catalog. This interview is well worth the 40 minutes it takes to impart the important wisdom of one of Maryland’s foremost sages.
University of DC Jazz Forum: A Conversation with Reuben Jackson
In this video from the UDC Jazz Forum, jazz scholar, Reuben Jackson, sits down with historian, Rusty Hassan, to discuss his life and career.
Inside the Industry: The Wonderful World of Galleys
Joanna Biggar’s new book has just gone to galley, but what exactly does that mean?