Hazen Featured in New Article: "Baltimore: Great Poets Live Here"
Poet, Elizabeth Hazen, and her second collection, Girls Like Us, are featured in this Fishbowl article exploring the poets of Baltimore
Poet, Elizabeth Hazen, is featured alongside other notable names in the Baltimore literary scene such as Dora Malech and Steven Leyva in this extolling article from Baltimore Fishbowl writer Jennie Hann.
Elizabeth Hazen, who has written several essays for the Fishbowl, released her latest collection, Girls Like Us, in March right before the upswing of the pandemic. Since then, GLU has received much critical acclaim garnering glowing reviews from publications such as The Literary Review, Lit Pub, and London Grip. Jennie Hann's article praises the feminist commentary of GLU and Hazen's incisive and economic style which "twist[s] the knife yet deeper." An excerpt follows below:
By day, Hazen teaches English at Calvert School. We’re told on good authority that her classes are “lit”—as in, exciting, turned on, ablaze. No accident, then, that Girls Like Us has been described as “poetry on fire.” From the first page, Hazen’s words burst into flame, lingering in the mind with explosive residue long after the book has been shut. Take, for instance, “Devices,” which opens the volume and sets its tone. On the surface, this is a conventional list poem, a series of mnemonics to help students learn poetic terms (also known as “devices”). Dry material? Wait until Hazen strikes the match between her teeth:
Assonance
repeats vowel sounds: hot bod, dumb slut, frigid bitch.
Even his line—“Girl, we’ll have a fine time”—
or her refusals—“No! Don’t!”
Just like that, a clever exercise becomes a meditation on the casual misogyny of everyday life and language. We often think of poetic diction as elevated or rarified. Hazen dispels that notion. She writes poetry that’s legible because it’s also real and relate-able. Notice, above, how her carefully chosen slang examples riff on the note sounded by the term’s first syllable (“ass-”). Am I right to think you won’t have any trouble remembering “assonance” from now on?
New Review of Girls Like Us: GLU “Bulges with Debilitating Last Lines”
In Lannie Stabile’s new review of Elizabeth Hazen’s second collection Girls Like Us, she raves about the effect of Hazen’s “last lines.” Girls Like Us, she says, is “bulging with debilitating last lines.” Like this one in the opening poem “Devices,” that Stabile points to as like a “hook,” “We’ve been called so many things that we are not, we startle at the sound of our own names.”
New Poem by Elizabeth Hazen “Panic Attack” Lands in Failbetter
A new poem by Maryland standout Elizabeth Hazen has been published in the 62nd volume of Failbetter literary journal. The poem, titled “Panic Attack,” is dark and violent.
Attending AWP? Check out Katherine E. Young’s Panel on Women in Translation
Join Katherine E. Young at AWP to discuss women in translation and systems of exclusion.