There is an exceptional current of linguistic music that careens beneath Anna Evans’ poetry of irrepressible desire and botched relationships that give her work its unique, luxuriant power of insight and acceptance. One suspects this is owed to her Britishness, and a sound education in metrical poetry. But I believe she simply possesses a wicked […]
Introductions
Marion Wrenn: Introductions, a series
“Letter to Brooks,” Major Jackson’s tour de force poem in Hoops (2006), is a daring act of publicly intellectual intimacy. An “epistolary chat,” the poem is an unfurling act of gratitude. We witness Jackson bearing witness to luck and legacy, to the happy accident of knowing your idols—and the ripple effect of shepherding those generous […]
Christopher Connelly: Introduction to International Poetry Supplement
Don’t mistake the Painted Bride Quarterly’s “International Poetry Supplement” for another friendly exhibition of the exotic species of poetry that flourish in other countries. Instead, think of it as a kick aimed at contemporary American poetry’s corpulent ass. Years of inbreeding have produced a surfeit of lazy poems that are either too hermetic to be […]
Marion Wrenn: Editor’s Introduction
I. In the days after the tragedies of 9/11, some of us sought refuge in movie theaters. In fact, one theater in the frozen section of lower Manhattan opened its doors to shell-shocked patrons and offered free soda and popcorn and movies. God bless a film like Rat Race in days like these. But as […]