New Poems in Diode!
For many months now, I’ve been working on a hybrid memoir about my long-term love affair with Anne Carson’s novel-in-verse, Autobiography of Red. The manuscript, Red Monsters, blends person essay, close reading, pedagogy, and poetry. Divided into three parts, the project explores how Carson’s book has changed me as a reader, as a teacher, and as a writer. While the three prose sections are too long to send out as individual essays, I have been submitting the poems from the manuscript to literary journals.
So, I’m absolutely thrilled that four of these poems–prose poems that recount an imaginary classroom visit with the character of Geryon–are up at Diode. I love Diode, not only because the journal has so often been supportive of my work but also because its publishing arm, Diode Editions, published my book American Samizdat in 2019. Patty Paine, who founded the press in 2012, has been such a champion of my poems and is just a wonderful literary citizen in general.
In any case, if you’re interested in a sneak preview of the work of Red Monsters, you can read through poems from the manuscript here.