Yanyi – A Formal Feeling (July 2023)

Withholding, selective detail, invention—these are all formal choices a poet makes to obscure and illuminate painful experiences that are so immense that “a certain Slant of light” is required to perceive them.  Yanyi explores the distances of mystery, form, style, and the spiritual in the work of Linda Gregg, Mary Oliver, Paul Celan, and Agha Shahid Ali and emerges with some approaches to read for and write about personal and historical pain.