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.”'
A Short Thought on Grace’s Interview with Jorie Graham (by Writer, Nin Andrews)
Nin Andrews is a poet. Most recently of Miss August which is out now from the awesome Cavankerry Press and most notably of the collection, Why God is a Woman. Nin Andrews is also a fan of Grace Cavalieri’s interview with Jorie Graham which she recently extolled over on ITN.
Featured Audio: The 2019 Maryland Poet Laureate Reads her Poem “Work is my Secret Lover”
Governor Hogan recently announced Maryland’s ninth Poet Laureate to be the incomparable Grace Cavalieri. In his press conference regarding the announcement he touched on her “lifelong” dedication to poetry, and this precisely is one of those defining characteristics of a great artist. ASP celebrated this aspect of Grace in her Legacy Book, Other Voices, Other Lives which is an atemporal sampling of her entire career to now, from poetry to prose, from plays to interviews with US Poets Laureate. It should come as no surprise to Mr. Hogan nor the careful reader of her works then that she has an almost religious dedication and inescapable fascination with her art and its many ingredients. As you we shall hear, in her poem “Work is my Secret Lover,” Poetry is the muse.
ASP Author’s Gift Guide for Book-Lovers (PART 3)
ASP Author’s Gift Guide for Book-Lovers Part 3: The Scholar, The Teacher, and The Godfather A Sampling of Music, Mythology, and Books that Touch the Heart Reuben Jackson Poet […]