Melissa Crowe is the author of
Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in the
Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, Four Way Review, POETRY, and
Thrush, among other journals. She coordinates the MFA program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she teaches courses in poetry and publishing.
INTRODUCTION
Certainly there are things I wish my younger self didn’t have to wait so long to discover about writing that emotional power lies, so often, in the most unassuming, daily, and personal of details; that compression is a superpower; that formal constraint can give rise to freedom, sometimes (almost paradoxically) by limiting the field of choices, sometimes by forcing a revelation the freest verse would let us avoid. Honestly, though, I think my young self might have some things to tell
Edited by Neil Astley. Bloodaxe, out now
The fourth anthology in the publisher’s Staying Alive series tagline: “real poems for unreal times” offers an international selection of more than 500 poems addressing themes of love, loss, fear, and pain, as well as the joy of living.
Together in a Sudden Strangeness
Edited by Alice Quinn, Knopf, out now
Reflecting on Covid-19 and its long-ranging impacts, this anthology collects 85 poems by prominent writers including Billy Collins, Jane Hirshfield, Ada Limón, and Carl Phillips.
Walkman
Michael Robbins. Penguin Books, June
In poems that contemplate the end of the world, Robbins examines the political moment and current ecological crisis, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic.