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?
Featured Poetry: “Burial at Shanidar” by Elizabeth Hazen
This is no modern tradition, says Elizabeth Hazen. It is not only now that humans ornament their dead with flowers. “See,” she says in her rumination on tradition and humanity, Burial at Shanidar, “Even from a distance we dream of gardens where there should be stone.” And on Christmas especially, it is so wonderful to curl up with a book of poetry, even to read out-loud to one’s family, and bask in the ways we make words, just like the long winter days of dark, meaningful with light and tradition.
Mark A. Pritchard Reads from His Novel, “Billy Christmas”
It’s that time of year again. As I’m sure you know. That time of year to rediscover all those things one loves and yet stores in boxes during the sunnier months–ornaments, heirlooms, wax statues, wreaths, and the classics. And although one should not consider Billy Christmas a novel pigeon-held by its festive nature, for it is good any day of the year, (as are the classics!) we are so happy the holiday season is here to give us an opportunity to promote Mark A. Pritchard’s incredible young adult novel.
Grace Cavalieri’s November 2018 Exemplars of Poetry
Every month for the Washington Independent Review of Books, the amazing Maryland Poet Grace Cavalieri, author of Other Voices, Other Lives, does a round-up style review of the best recently released independent books of poetry and books about poetry…