The Johns Hopkins Review Publishes two Poems by Elizabeth Hazen
"Circling" and "Imperatives" both appear in Elizabeth Hazen's full-length collection GIRLS LIKE US
Two poems from Elizabeth Hazen's new collection Girls Like Us have been published in the spring edition of the esteemed Hopkins Review.
Hazen, a graduate of the Hopkins Writing Seminars, has been receiving a lot of attention as of late for her collection Girls Like Us. New reviews in Lit Pub and The Literary Review rave about her "Precision-tool craft with words" and her "neatness and restraint" while dealing with deeply traumatic and difficult subject matter.
These are not the first poems from Girls Like Us to appear in a literary magazine; other poems from the collection have appeared in Potomac, Shenandoah, Coachella, Antigonish, The American Literary Review, and others.
Girls Like Us is packed with fierce, eloquent, and deeply intelligent poetry focused on female identity and the contradictory personas women are expected to embody. The women in these poems sometimes fear and sometimes knowingly provoke the male gaze. At times, they try to reconcile themselves to the violence that such attentions may bring; at others, they actively defy it. Hazen’s insights into the conflict between desire and wholeness, between self and self-destruction, are harrowing and wise. The predicaments confronted in Girls Like Us are age-old and universal—but in our current era, Hazen’s work has a particular weight, power, and value.