It’s an interesting experience, being a Black woman. Traversing this world born as two marginalized identities, not receiving support from either at the same time. When standing up for ourselves we are painted as aggressive, too passionate, perpetually angry, the villain. The experiences of being a woman differ globally but there seems to be a consensus that being a woman entails some sort of suffering at the hands of patriarchal society. At least that’s how it is explored within white women’s spaces. Albeit true, when Black women come into these spaces to impart their own experiences being a woman coupled with being Black, suddenly we are shunned. Suddenly we don’t know what it’s like to be a woman because we are Black. What they refuse to realize is that our womanly experience is unique. It’s beautiful, it's painful, it’s joyous, it breeds community. This is explored within Angelique Zobitz’s poetry book Seraphim.
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Have you ever found yourself in the position of talking out loud to yourself all the while hoping some external force can hear you? Maybe there’s a motive behind talking out loud, maybe, just maybe someone or something is listening. In Tell This to the Universe, Katie Prince delves into the deeply human desire to impose order on the world through knowledge. She combines science, mathematics, astronomy, and language as metaphors for our intellectual attempts to understand the universe. Yet, running through these poems is a countercurrent of chaos, reflected in her stream-of-consciousness style, which suggests that while we seek answers, both the cosmos and our own minds resist such clear-cut resolutions.
The biggest question we as humans can ask is: “Why?” The contemplation of our mortality frequents art in many forms, and Grzedorz Wróblewski’s poetry not only contemplates the human experience, but also discusses what it means to exist in our current society. His writing sheds light on topics like capitalism, heteronormativity, and the normalization of violence in a way that is new and abstract. The reader must want to actively seek out what the meaning of each poem is and, by doing so, they become closer to the topic that Wróblewski selected to discuss.
Grzedorz Wróblewski’s Dear Beloved Humans, is a collection of poems spanning multiple decades of authorship. Born in Warsaw in 1962, Wróblewski grew up in the creative communities and culture of Poland where he began his career as a poet and artist. In 1985, Wróblewski emigrated to Denmark, prompting a shift in perspective and a new form of inspiration for his poetry. As I read through this collection, I found myself understanding the turmoil that Wróblewski felt over the course of his life and the humorously analytical and at times nihilistic way in which he portrayed his surroundings in his writing.
“We may know the sacred; we may not impart it.”
George Choundas tosses this penetrating sentence seventy-five pages into his collection of essays, Until All You See is Sky. It’s one of the many turns of phrase that will make the reader pause and reflect. This in itself is not so shocking—good writing should, at the bare minimum, have an impact on the reader. What sets Choundas apart from the others, in my opinion, is context. Where this shrewd pronouncement is more befitting a spiritual revelation or a hard-learned life lesson, Choundas has gifted this deep and affecting statement to… baked goods.
Most of us are familiar with the concept of the seven deadly sins: gluttony, envy, wrath, lust, sloth, to name a few. Alice Kaltman embraces these sins—along with their virtuous counterparts—in her short story collection, Almost Deadly, Almost Good. She personifies the sins in her complex characters while exploring an equal number of virtues. Her stories depict the tragedies and triumphs of human nature. Characters embodying gluttony, envy, and wrath seem to be in a constant state of inner conflict and turmoil while those who practice kindness, humility, and patience have better outcomes.
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