Paisley Rekdal says writing her sixth poetry collection,Nightingale, out in May from Copper Canyon Press, was“like trying to conduct a whirlwind.” The result is a stunningbook about transformation that will change the way we readviolence, silence, and the stories handed down to us.
ON THE day we are trying to carve out time for a conversation, Paisley Rekdal is juggling her teaching schedule at the University of Utah with a morning speech at a philosophy conference on social pain and memory and a late-afternoon meeting to chair a graduate student’s oral exams on ekphrastic poetry. This is in addition to the swirl of workshops, lectures, readings, and other projects related to her 2017 appointment as poet laureate of Utah, including assembling a digital map of the literary population of her home state. “It’s getting to an almost comical level of busyness,” she says, then adds, “It’s totally self-imposed.”
Which isn’t entirely true, but such are the demands of a writer whose range and reach of activities extends to poetry, memoir, essays, and long-form journalism. Rekdal has published five books of award-winning poetry since her first collection, A Crash of Rhinos, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2000. Subsequent volumes include Animal Eye (University of Pittsburgh Press), winner of the 2013 Rilke Award, and Imaginary Vessels (Copper Canyon Press), a finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Individual poems have appeared in the Best American Poetry anthologies of 2012, 2013, 2016, 2017, and 2019. This year’s selection, “Four Marys,” appears in her new book, Nightingale, forthcoming in May from Copper Canyon Press. Rekdal has also published three nonfiction books and along the way received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and both the Wyoming and Utah State Arts Councils. As a Fulbright Scholar she taught for a year in Chonju in South Korea, and she has lived in Paris and Hanoi through the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship.
Paisley Rekdal works on the move.
This story is from the May - June 2019 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the May - June 2019 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Literary MagNet
When Greg Marshall began writing the essays that would become his memoir, Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It (Abrams Press, June 2023), he wanted to explore growing up in Utah and what he calls \"the oddball occurrences in my oddball family.\" He says, \"I wanted to call the book Long-Term Side Effects of Accutane and pitch it as Six Feet Under meets The Wonder Years.\" But in 2014 he discovered his diagnosis of cerebral palsy, information his family had withheld from him for nearly thirty years, telling him he had \"tight tendons\" in his leg. This revelation shifted the focus of the project, which became an \"investigation into selfhood, uncovering the untold story of my body,\" says Marshall. Irreverent and playful, Leg reckons with disability, illness, queerness, and the process of understanding our families and ourselves.
THE MEUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY
READING The Museum of Human History felt like listening to a great harmonic hum. After I finished it I found the hum lingering in my ears. Its echo continued for days.
The Sea Elephants
SHASTRI Akella's poised, elegant debut, The Sea Elephants, is a bildungsroman of a young man who joins a street theater group in India after fleeing his father's violent disapproval, the death of his twin sisters, and his mother's unfathomable grief.
The History of a Difficult Child
MIHRET Sibhat's debut novel begins with God dumping rain on a small Ethiopian town as though. He were mad at somebody.
The Sorrows of Others
AS I read each story in Ada Zhang’s brilliant collection, The Sorrows of Others, within the first few paragraphs— sometimes the first few sentences— I felt I understood the characters intimately and profoundly, such that every choice they made, no matter how radical, ill-advised, or baffling to those around them, seemed inevitable and true to me.
We Are a Haunting
TYRIEK White’s debut novel, We Are a Haunting, strikes me as both a love letter to New York City and a kind of elegy.
RADICAL ATTENTION
IN HER LATEST BOOK, THE LIGHT ROOM: ON ART AND CARE, PUBLISHED BY RIVERHEAD BOOKS IN JULY, KATE ZAMBRENO CELEBRATES THE ETHICAL WORK OF CAREGIVING, THE SMALL JOYS OF ORDINARY LIFE, AND AN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE NATURAL WORLD WITHIN HUMAN SPACES.
The Fine Print
HOW TO READ YOUR BOOK CONTRACT
First
GINA CHUNG'S SEA CHANGE
Blooming how she must
WITH ROOTS IN NATURE WRITING, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, POETRY, AND PHOTOGRAPHY, CAMILLE T. DUNGY'S NEW BOOK, SOIL: THE STORY OF A BLACK MOTHER'S GARDEN, DELVES INTO THE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL ACT OF CULTIVATING AND DIVERSIFYING A GARDEN OF HERBS, VEGETABLES, FLOWERS, AND OTHER PLANTS IN THE PREDOMINANTLY WHITE COMMUNITY OF FORT COLLINS, COLORADO.
