Alan Squire Publishing

A Small Press With Big Ideas

Elizabeth Hazen Describes the “Girls Like Us” Menu with Lesley Wheeler As part of Lesley Wheeler's "Virtual Salon" Series, Elizabeth Hazen describes an accompanying menu for her poetry collection "Girls Like Us" and gives advice on getting through the quarantine. "If one wanted to emulate the women in many of the poems, straight liquor – any kind – would be a fitting refreshment; another version of the party’s menu could be the austere black coffee and stale donuts or off-brand cookies so often associated with recovery. A wild array of mocktails would be better suited to a … [Read more...]

An Interview with Elizabeth Hazen, Baltimore Poet and 2019 Baker Award Finalist "Baltimore is a small city; it is almost impossible to leave the house without running into someone you know. Until I moved here, I never experienced a strong connection to a place, but after almost 20 years here, I feel Baltimore, with all of its quirk and contradiction, is part of my identity." Last week Baltimore poet, Elizabeth Hazen, was announced as a finalist for the 2019 Baker Award in literature. Baltimore poet, Elizabeth Hazen's first collection of poems is entitled Chaos … [Read more...]

Featured Poetry: "Winter Funeral" by Elizabeth Hazen Fully embracing what the lyric mode does best, Hazen provides the readers with brief, intense poems that preserve a suspended moment in time, attempting to record the thought processes and emotions of the speaker much like tree rings reveal drought, heat, and age. With astonishing clarity and concision, Hazen explores the mysteries of our realities—which are ultimately beholden to entropy. —Charlotte Pence, Kenyon Review Winter Funeral The embouchure opens to the unknown of ocean, the horizon’s deceptive line. It unfolds … [Read more...]

Elizabeth Hazen will be reading as a part of the Reston Reading Series hosted by Nathan Leslie and Meredith Reynolds. Marion Winik, a longtime All Things Considered commentator and essayist, and Jona Colson, an educator and poet, will read from their work as well. "Reston's Used Book Shop, founded in 1978 by Restonians Sue Schram and Sue Wensell, known as "the Sues," changed friendly hands in 1999. Current owners, Bud and Susan Burwell, continue the community tradition inspired by the original owners. Reston's Used Book Shop is the place "Where Books and People Meet."' Elizabeth … [Read more...]

Read Elizabeth Hazen's "Burial at Shanidar" from her collection Chaos Theories Christmas is the traditional European winter celebration of life. It endows a grace to flurries in the pines, bringing celestial comparisons to moon and star light, it celebrates the beauty, for Christians, of the messianic birth, and it pierces what are the darkest days of the year with hung and twinkling ornaments and fairy lights strewn, and smiles and cheer. In a lot of ways this solstitial celebration is a reaction to and transformation of death. It reminds us that there is a spirit in all things which does … [Read more...]

  Elizabeth Hazen sits down with Elizabeth Spires to discuss her new Poetry Collection, "A Memory of the Future" Two well-educated poets, clear admirers of one another's work, and denizens of Baltimore sit for what must have been a rigorous yet pacific cup of tea. Hazen, author of Chaos Theories, gives a short review of Elizabeth Spires' new collection and an overview of her career which, among trenchant analyses, glimmers with admiration. Then follows a short Q&A where Spires muses on her home city, politics at play, and the influence of zen in her life and her poetry. Read the … [Read more...]

Elizabeth Hazen's "Thanatosis" selected for Best American Poetry 2013, an interview and debrief In 2013 "Thanatosis", a poem from Elizabeth Hazen's debut collection Chaos Theories, was selected for publication in Best American Poetry. B. Boyd of The Baltimore Fishbowl sat down with Elizabeth to discuss the honor and to chronicle her evolving relationship with science, poetry, and chaos theory. Read the full interview here A long excerpt and "Thanatosis" reprinted: What was your process like, working and reworking this winning poem? I was reading about the principle of fight or flight … [Read more...]

Elizabeth Hazen Reads "Maxwell's Demon" Hazen has a way of uncovering universal feelings that resonate, even if we haven’t experienced her particular grief or confusion. Gabriella Souza “By dint of his prodigious intelligence and dexterity, the goblin could cause things to happen that are never seen to occur in nature, things that seemed able to violate the second law of thermodynamics.” — Hans Christian von Baeyer. This is the epigraph which opens Elizabeth Hazen's wonderful poem, Maxwell's Demon. You can read more on the genesis of the poem and on finding poetic inspiration within the … [Read more...]

Lessons From a Turtle by Elizabeth Hazen Once at the National Zoo, I watched a pair of giant tortoises copulating, the sound that emanated from their habitat like a sleeper’s distress in the midst of a confusing dream. My son wondered what the matter was. All of the children wondered, the older ones with a slight blush of awareness. The adults chuckled nervously, parents scooting their children along to the next exhibit. Meanwhile I stared with the fascination of a scientist, the brazenness of a paparazzo. How those enormous, armored bodies could fit together—how even turtles could evince … [Read more...]

Waiting for Maxwell's Demon by Elizabeth Hazen My father is a geophysicist. As a child, I spent many hours on road trips to remote quarries where we would hike to an outcrop and spend hours splitting rocks, searching for fossils. While in retrospect I am grateful for these unique experiences, my younger self ­– and particularly my teenage self – rejected all things scientific. That was my dad’s realm, and I was going to be my own person. Perhaps because of my willful rejection of science-related material in my formative years, in my adult life I have returned to science with intense curiosity. … [Read more...]