The first section, “Doll,” focuses on paper dolls, both fashion dolls and garlands of connected dolls. These poems interrogate embodiment, relationships between women, and creating an identity given stifling constraints. The speaker in “Paper Dreams” says, “Doll paper dreams tabs-in-slots, / Dreams the sheet // From which / She was punched. // How close it felt to free, / Uniting all those tiny holes // To outline / Her in air.” In our conversation during her live performance, Ginsburg pointed out to me that paper is, in fact, a three-dimensional object, it’s just very thin, and if you look closely, it is made up of intricate layers. I’ve thought about that a lot since, and her poems demonstrate that careful attention to layers, subtly, and textures.

The second section, “Apollo,” explores the mythological god Apollo (featured in Daphne’s story), the moon landing (and the surrounding conspiracies), and the moon itself. These poems unfold in the same landscape as all the previous poems, as evidenced by the continued threads of lush imagery haunted by violence: “Wolf god. Sheep god. God trapped in a mine. God of fields and flowers. Of pastures and herds. God of exoskeletons. Hunter and flayer, feeder of snakes. Healer god of arrows, of oracles you will never figure out. God of colonies and the crying rock. Unshorn god. Shining god of mice and islands” (“Apollo”). I was fascinated to learn that the poems in this section are also a limited edition handmade chapbook published by Condensery Press, aptly titled Apollo. I think a lot about the chapbook form, especially in relation to the full-length collection, and these two publications offer a compelling example of what that can look like.

The final section, “Toile,” invites readers into pastoral vignettes set in the same landscape as the rest of the book. The poem “Night” shows us: “A pond disrupts the field / like a smoke break a night shift: flicker // of light, moon leaning on the bank, small fire / doused in the flush surface. // As the makers of night make night, / as night is time and ends, this world drowns // its workers, the makers of the world.” These poems are beautiful and meditative while maintaining the threads of violence and doubt from the previous sections. I admire Ginsburg’s ability to craft a cohesive collection out of seemingly disparate subjects, showcasing the rich possibilities of poetry. Doll Apollo is surprising and gorgeous, full of poems that stick with me. You should read it.

Listen to the podcast episode: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/yhn8OJf1EAb

Link to the book: https://lsupress.org/books/detail/doll-apollo/

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The opening poem is not the only piece with a dedication or an address to someone else. Zantea writes poems for other poets, her son, and other victims of violence. One particularly chilling piece is entitled “Letter to Carolyn Bryant,” the white woman who is responsible for Emmett Till’s murder. Carolyn Bryant is still living at the time of this writing. At the time of Zantea’s performance, news outlets were reporting the discovery of an unserved warrant for Bryant’s arrest. A grand jury in Mississippi declined to indict Bryant; the Till family and activists are still seeking justice. In the poem, the speaker says, “We haven’t seen your face, we haven’t seen your children, how are they? Your boys, do you have grandchildren? Do you watch them play, and wonder how they would look bloated in muddy waters?” This poem demonstrates another important purpose of poetry—speaking truth to power—and highlights the injustices pervasive in our culture.

For all its unflinching darkness, this book is also imbued with the promise of a life beyond that darkness. In “Self-Reflection, Part 2,” the speaker reminds us of the power and value of using one’s voice: “We will stand/ United/ Prepared to fight for our weak./ Speak for those who have been silenced. / We become everything the world told us not to be.” Zantea told me that she wrote this book with her young students in mind. While the book depicts violence and death, these realities are portrayed with the necessary honesty to give struggling young people a deep sense of hope. You can learn more about Zantea’s vision for the book by listening to the podcast episode, and of course, you should pick up a copy for yourself.

Podcast episode: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/albCnqI09vb

Book: https://store.deepvellum.org/products/oak-cliff-hangers

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Raqi tells us that “Motorcycle clubs like the Lawless were chapters left out of books, so they wrote their own with rubber and asphalt” (61). In my conversation with Temblador, she told me about the meticulous research that went into the book’s complex and authentic depiction of a culture many folks only know about through tropes in storytelling. In our Inner Moonlight episode, you can hear Temblador expand on the research she conducted, including earning her motorcycle license. Temblador is equally meticulous in creating characters who are never solely heroic or villainous. It’s true that Raqi’s early life is filled with violence and trauma, but there are also moments of tenderness, connection, and care. Raqi is just as complicated as everyone else in the book—she is smart and confident, but also guarded and sometimes catastrophically impulsive. These elements make for a fascinating and immersive experience.

The magical realism throughout this book sets it apart and offers another intriguing layer. Images of skulls recur throughout the narrative, and they are almost always alive: “I took careful time pouring over the center patch [of Dodge’s black leather vest]—a motorcycle with a skull in the middle, tongue out in a salacious jeer. Rubbing my fingers over the skull awakened it from slumber. Its empty sockets looked around wildly until it saw me and calmed. The skull whipped its tongue inside its mouth for just a second, then flicked it out and licked my hand from the bottom of my palm to the tip of my fingertips. Its tongue was rough like worn tires embedded with metal nails, glass, and dirt. It marked me as one of its own until I died” (35). These moments are poetic, beautiful, and often unsettling, and as a poet, I absolutely loved it.

Like I said, I don’t read many novels, but I am so glad I read this one. I highly encourage you to check out Temblador’s Inner Moonlight episode to hear her read one of my favorite moments, and of course, you should pick up a copy of Half Outlaw for yourself.

Podcast episode: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/49KbslOPbwb

Book: https://www.blackstonepublishing.com/half-outlaw-dwtb.html

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One of my favorite things about this book is the crown of sonnets entitled “Body, Burn, Memory.” A crown of sonnets is a sequence (fifteen sonnets, in this case) where each poem takes its first line from the final line of the preceding poem. The sequence develops several threads: the speaker’s relationship with a woman called Sarah, the death of a friend’s mother to cancer, the speaker’s own mother, isolation and desire. The final sonnet in the sequence encapsulates these concerns and expresses what this book accomplishes: “I have collected the bones/of the women of my life, have erected/monuments in me. They flash brighter/than anything celestial in this/wasteland.” The speaker in these poems honors the past and makes a monument of bodily history without dismissing the truth of mortality.

I encourage you to pick up a copy of Undoing the Hide’s Taut Musculature, and allow yourself to be drawn into its dark, surprising world. You should also listen to Baker’s Inner Moonlight performance from January 2022, in which he offers further insight into these poems.

Podcast episode 

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In addition to my appreciation for Walker’s landscapes, I admire her ability to turn her poetic eye toward a range of other topics. Walker has a gift for personification, as evidenced in “After Water Was Separated from Water,” in which Walker turns the poem itself into a character. The speaker regales the curious poem with a telling of the Genesis myth, and at some point, the poem begins to drown in the speaker’s cup of tea. This poem exemplifies the balance of humor, whimsy, and darkness that makes these poems so compelling. The collection includes a handful of poems about superheroes, like Batman, Aquaman, and my favorite of these offerings, Wonder Woman. In “Princess Diana of Themyscira, Aka Wonder Woman,” the speaker is at once celebratory, jealous, and critical of the superhero, as in these powerful lines: “I do not buy her T-shirt. / The power of her shield too flimsy / to resuscitate the past of a bruised little girl / who wears a vacancy sign each day / where innocence used to live.” While the subjects of these poems vary widely, Walker’s voice is consistently sharp and surprising throughout the collection.

I found so much to enjoy in From the Cow’s Eye & Other Poems, and my conversation with Walker for the September podcast episode of Inner Moonlight was equally delightful. Listen to the episode to hear some of the poems, hear the backstory for the project, and more about Walker’s incredible work.

Loretta Diane Walker was the guest for The Inner Moonlight Podcast episode, you can listen to the conversation  here

You can find this book here

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I love books that expand my notion of what poetry can do, especially when the poems take up elements of other literary genres. The Rented Altar moves through four sections titled “Engagement,” “Honeymoon,” “Labor,” and “Splinter.” Each poem in the collection contains its own surprises, but the overall experience of the book is that of a horror/noir/dark fairytale novel-in-verse. In the title poem, which appears in “Engagement,” the speaker invites us into the day after her wedding, waking to find “the entire town [came] down / with fever,” and a scene of dead plants, broken glass, and destruction. The speaker says, chillingly, “I knew this would happen. / Even when I love as well as I can, / I leave a wake of ruin.” The speaker is not the only purveyor of destruction in the book; the husband character is revealed to be terrifying and cruel. Part of the horror here is that none of the adult characters are clearly “good.” I am drawn to the voice of the speaker, who relays her own darkness and the darkness of her husband with calm but visceral clarity.

The darkness of the book is tempered by its lush imagery—it’s full of flowers, fruit, and vivid sensory experiences—and the presence of the stepson, who is depicted in a loving, luminous tone. The speaker discovers she is unable to conceive a child, which we learn more about in poems with amazing titles like “What I Want Them to Say About Me the Next Time I Lose a Baby.” The poems in this collection consider grief as well as the emotional journey of finding one’s place as a stepparent. Honestly, in the landscape of narratives about motherhood, this voice is unique, and that’s a definite strength of the collection for me. In “Labor Day Weekend at Captiva Island,” the speaker asks, “How does the boy / view my origin? / At what moment / did I become his?” This collection asks this, and many other profound questions about parenthood, and I found that satisfying as a parent myself.

When I spoke to Lauren Berry about this book, she told me it scared some folks enough that she was told to “put it in a drawer” for good. I’m glad she didn’t. The thing about poetry is that it makes no  promises to the reader about what it can do. In the poem, “We Gave Ourselves the Summer to Find the Spark,” which closes the collection, the speaker mentions “the bad girls / in the horror films I made him binge that summer. // They stood no chance as they scurried down basement stairs, / their delicate ankles twisting just off-screen, pianos in high alert,” smartly reminding us what sort of story we’ve been in all along. If you didn’t know that poetry can do what your favorite scary stories can do—draw you in, startle and unsettle you, tell you something deeply dark but very true about yourself or someone else—now you do. I dare you to read it.

Lauren Berry was the guest for The Inner Moonlight Podcast episode in July, you can listen to the conversation  here

You can find this book here

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Organized like a double album, Myrick tells us she aimed to “[feature] the classic rhythms and time signatures of argument, and the collective connective of love, hate, and getting by.” The poems are numbered according to the order in which they were composed, but they are not arranged in a linear way. The “sides” of the albums serve as the organizing force, and their titles are suggestive of the book’s progression: Side One, “Bless Your Heart;” Side Two, “A Faulty Trigger by Design;” Side Three, “Because, America;” and Side Four, “This Eulogy is a Burning Rope.”

The collection repeatedly asks what to do with relationships when you know too much about someone’s views, and when their views are specifically harmful to you or someone else. In poem 83, the speaker dares us: “Ask yourself//Why you let people you know talk that way/Why you’re friends with someone who wouldn’t piss on me to save me/Why you care about offending someone who doesn’t care about offending me.” Myrick doesn’t offer solutions, but invites us to consider the prevalence of this heartbreaking experience, and the myriad ways it manifests in our lives.

The book also doesn’t make any calls for “civility,” or any other language that might negate the real harm unfolding. Poem 55 includes the title line, and other lines that haunt me: “I am this state of emergency/The one I describe, the one I’m in, a different one than you think we’re in/I want to quit raiding the spiteful junk drawer that is my brain/I try to be sane and careful in realm of the possible/But the only way out is out.” I am impressed with Myrick’s ability to strike such an unsettling tone. The collection reveals a shared darkness that is at once individual and woven into U.S. culture, but it also occasionally rings of hope for the future. Profound and illuminating, this book is a must-read.

Listen to this conversation here

You can find the book here

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Quijana had me hooked from the opening: “I live in a tilted house. A bowling ball on our living room floor would roll past the couch, past the dining table, all the way to the kitchen sink. And if the sink wasn’t there and the wall wasn’t there and the bathroom behind that wasn’t there, the ball would roll all the way to my room at the end of the house. That’s what it’s like being twelve. Everything rolling toward you” (1). The novel spans only the fall semester of Quijana’s seventh grade year, and everything does, indeed, roll right at her. The book has a large cast of family members, friends, teachers, and classmates, each lovingly and honestly depicted. The vibrant, beautiful voice of the protagonist rings clearly as she reckons with her split sense of identity, her Americanness against her Guatemalan heritage, and the challenges of crossing borders of all kinds: between countries, between childhood and adulthood, and in relationships with family and friends.

By far my favorite thing about THE OTHER HALF OF HAPPY is the fact that Balcárcel remains unmistakably a poet. The language in this book is lush and beautiful, while maintaining the clarity and accessibility necessary for its audience. Balcárcel’s choice of first-person, present tense offers immediacy with Quijana’s experience, and the gorgeous use of language makes that immediacy such a pleasure. In one particularly poetic scene, we join the protagonist in choir class:

“The room stills and we are C. I give myself to the note. C sweeps through my body; worries fall way. A dozen thoughts disappear.

Mr. Green cues each section, and sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses take their notes, building a chord. Ahhh vibrates my bones.

Mr. Green closes his eyes, and our forty voices hold. I feel popped out of myself and centered in myself at the same time. My eyes scan the room, and I see short hair, long hair, kids with glasses, kids with braces. I see a Minecraft kid, a Latina from lunch, and a boy with cowboy boots next to a boy with high-tops.

The C chord locks, perfectly in tune. For this single wide second, we’re all one.” (44-45)

This scene also reflects one of the major concerns of the book: belonging. Quijana’s journey to belong with her friends, her family, and herself often presents us with these moments of hope and unity, and I found that very satisfying as a reader.

Another refreshing element of this book is Quijana’s friend Jayden. Balcárcel tells me that Jayden is based on her real-life best friend from seventh grade, Daryl, to whom the book is dedicated. Early in the book, Quijana has a crush on Jayden, and slowly comes to realize that he has a crush on someone else, a friend from theater called Seth. As a queer person, I am always hoping for good queer representation, and I am always bracing myself for it turn into any of countless tired tropes. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I didn’t expect a queer character at all, honestly, and then he was so lovingly rendered, his storyline wasn’t solely focused on a “coming out” narrative, he was just as developed as everyone else (see: one-note gay bestie in many stories), and nothing terrible befell him. I cannot imagine how I would have felt if I had encountered a character like Jayden in a book I was written for me when I was 12. I think it might have changed my life. I am so very glad this book exists, and that young readers can meet Jayden.

I have only mentioned a few outstanding elements of this book, but, y’all, there’s so much more! Spending a single action-packed semester with Quijana made me laugh, made me cry, and filled me with a sense of hope. Check out the March episode of the Inner Moonlight podcast to hear Balcárcel tell me all about how this book transformed from poetry to prose, and more of the inside scoop on the book and all its characters. I can’t recommend THE OTHER HALF OF HAPPY enough—even if you’re not in middle school.

Listen to this conversation here

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This April marks two years of being utterly stoked about all the poets and writers I have had the honor of hosting. In the last year, we’ve featured 22 writers, published six interviews, and one book review, with the help of Inner Moonlight collaborator Katy Dycus. Last April, we celebrated our first anniversary by inviting back all of our featured writers for a massive poetry party in the Wild Detectives backyard. This year, we are creating a similar sort of experience virtually. I am proud to present this series of videos from many of our amazing writers from the past year of Inner Moonlight!

One of the goals of Inner Moonlight is to hype folks with new books, which is why we developed the practice of interviews and reviews. In the video descriptions, you will find information on where you can learn more about these writers, and any books they have published. Just like I always say during intermission: buy a book!

The other thing we do at Inner Moonlight is create space for each other. It is such a powerful thing to gather and listen. So many people have approached me after shows to say how beautiful the night was, how warm and inviting the Wild Detectives is, how brilliant the features are, how surprising and fun the open mic is. While I miss curating that physical space, I have to say, seeing all these gorgeous faces and hearing work I love has done me so much good. I hope it does you good, as well. I am deeply proud of all we have accomplished and the magic we have created together.

Stay tuned for the future of Inner Moonlight!

The post Inner Moonlight Second Anniversary appeared first on The Wild Detectives.

Jenny Molberg: Thank you! It took me a long time to come up with the right title for the collection, because I wanted to capture the spirit of the collection in a single word. I went through the book and circled all the words and phrases that I felt captured a sense of a collective empowerment against abuse, the notion of healing from patriarchal oppression and the ways in which addiction can injure a family, and “refusal” stood out to me as a word that captured my intended purpose. I was reading Adrienne Rich’s essays at the time, and came across her powerful use of the word in “When We Dead Awaken.” I wanted to supplement that with a reference in literature that investigates female agency and thought Jane Eyre captured a character similar to my speaker. I was delighted to find that Brontë uses the word “refusal” in a passage where Jane is fighting for her own autonomy, so these two quotations became my epigraphs. I think the word “refusal” also captures the way I wanted to represent my modern-day Ophelia speaker, who refuses to be gaslighted by Hamlet or to succumb to the narrative Shakespeare enforced upon her.

LC: What was the final poem you wrote or revised for the book, and how did that affect your sense that the book was complete?

JM: The final poems I wrote for the book are the collection of poems in which Ophelia encounters and subsequently destroys the Demogorgon. “Loving Ophelia Is” is, I think, the last poem I wrote for the book. When I was at a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, I set out to transcribe all of Ophelia’s lines from the play to illuminate her story, after I read a critic who argued that “Ophelia has no story without Hamlet.” Read alone, her lines tell a story of gaslighting. I spent hours each day inventing a world in which she and the Demogorgon would interact. These poems were probably the most fun poems I wrote for the book.

LC: In an author’s note for your poem “Different Kinds of Sadness” at the Missouri Review, you describe the piece as a “love letter to a friend” and said you’re “interested in challenging the traditional canon of heterosexual love poems by focusing on the often unshakeable and quantifiably more stable relationship that can occur between two women.” I love the idea of love letters to friends. Why did you choose the epistle, versus some other form associated with love poems (sonnet, etc.)?

JM: That’s a great question—thank you. I’ve always been interested in the epistolary form, especially as an address rather than a dedication, wherein the “you” can be in a more direct conversation with the speaker, versus a more removed beloved you might find in a form like the sonnet. I think of this collection as an embodiment of a collective voice, and as a conversation with my friends and other women and men who have suffered abuse, trauma, and gaslighting. I wanted to leave space for dialogue, for the reader to feel like they were actively engaged in a conversation and could respond. After my divorce, I was talking with a friend and said something like, “I wish there were a hospital for this, where the other patients would also be recovering from a similar kind of invisible struggle or trauma,” and she said, “write that poem!” I imagined the speaker sending epistles out from the ward of her hospital for cheaters, and then I just kept writing these poems until the collection took shape as a kind of box of unsent letters.

LC: How do your teaching, editing, and writing lives intersect? To be clear, I don’t mean time management/balance. I’m curious how the different pursuits influence each other for you.

JM: This is such an important question. I find that I grow and learn so much from my teaching and editing. In crafting prompts and exercises for my students, I often work alongside them. In a recent course, I took my students on a Text Quest (thanks to Traci Brimhall for the idea!), in which they were each tasked with cultivating an obsession with a topic other than poetry. Then, they write poems in response to that obsession, engaging in persona, cento, erasures, and research-driven poems. I did this exercise along with my students, and that Text Quest has begun to shape itself into a third manuscript. Editing, for me, is also quite inspiring—I find in reading and selecting work for Pleiades: Literature in Context and Pleiades Press that I am fortunate enough to encounter some of the best poetry being written today, poetry that challenges and excites me, and so much of that work resonates with me as I craft my own poems. Being an editor also helps me to be more forgiving to myself when I send out work: I realize that when we must reject work submitted to Pleiades and Pleiades Press, that, because of space and a focus on a particular issue, we must say no to work that is eminently publishable, so it gives me comfort to recognize that when my own work is rejected, it can be for many reasons other than “it’s not good enough.” As an editor, I have the privilege of engaging in a literary dialogue, and to help usher work into the world that I believe in, and I am very grateful for that opportunity.

LC: What’s next? What are you looking forward to right now?

JM: Right now, I’m looking forward to AWP and my subsequent book tour (see you in Dallas!). I’m also looking forward to being a fellow at the Longleaf Writers Conference in Florida this coming May, to getting married to the love of my life in May, and to spending the summer on a much-needed hiatus from teaching to work on my third book manuscript.

Jenny Molberg will perform on March 11th with also poet Kathryn Nuernberger , at Inner Moonlight, The Wild Detectives monthly poetry reading series. More info here.

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