Introducing George the Poet: Search Party: A Collection of Poems
Book
'The title is Search Party - the idea being that we're all out here looking for something, and my...
100 Prized Poems: Twenty-Five Years of the Forward Books
Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, William Sieghart and Moniza Alvi
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"The Forward Prizes have turned a spotlight on contemporary poetry which is both searching and...
The Universe of Us
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International best-selling author of Love & Misadventure, Lullabies and Memories Lang Leav presents...
In Our Time: Culture
Podcast
Popular culture, poetry, music and visual arts and the roles they play in our society.
Pencil Shavings - and other things from my garbage can
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The debut poetry collection from young North Carolina writer, Kelcy Taylor, features pieces about...
Poetry Books North Carolina K. Taylor Kelcy Taylor kelcywrites
Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated The Poet X in Books
May 30, 2019
I've always loved poetry for that reason; especially poetry that plays with formatting - spacing and line breaks and size of stanzas. It's so much more evocative than simple paragraphs of prose. (My favorite poet is probably e.e. cummings, who is rather infamous for unusual formatting.)
Acavedo does similar things, making Xiomara's poetry explode across the page when necessary, and ordering it into simpler stanzas in calmer moments. It's not rhyming, even poetry; this is written slam poetry. And I love it.
Xiomara is Dominican, living in Harlem, with a very strict, religious mother. Her twin brother is gay but not out to their parents; Xiomara is fine with this but knows their mother won't be. Her poems cover her need to protect her brother and herself, both from their parents and from the outside world. She writes about street harassment and questioning God and falling in love with a boy, which is also against her mother's rules. Her poems are at turns heartbreaking and joyous, but always beautiful.
This is an amazing book, and is the second book on my Best of the Year list. I am blown away.You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.com
Between the Lines
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Darrian dreams of writing for the New York Times. To hone his skills and learn more about the power...