Issue 3.1
Winter 2023
Kathleen Hellen
Reflection
Here, I call as witness Carolyn Forché, who gives us “The Colonel,” the violence that befits the surreal. If we watch this space, if our dead ears come alive and we press them to the ground, what might be a poem becomes a disturbingly familiar headline.
watch this space
— Rachel Maddow
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how to get it right? How to make it useful?
linking context to the Nazis. To the White House
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when flower-ears are buried in the Rose Garden
when briefings parrot talking points
anything
I’ve got wrong? anything
I’ve forgotten
you know you don’t know
—why?
No more questions
who said anything specifically about poetry?
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Kathleen Hellen’s latest collection is Meet Me at the Bottom from Main Street Rag Publishing Co. Her credits include The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, her award-winning collection Umberto’s Night, published by Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento.
Kathleen's Book Recommendations
The Poetics of Space (1958), Gaston Bachelard
https://sites.evergreen.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/88/2015/05/Gaston-Bachelard-the-Poetics-of-Space.pdf
Ozone Journal (2015), Peter Balakian
https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/peter-balakian
American Bastard (2019), Jan Beatty
https://redhen.org/book/american-bastard/
Bitter Green (2015), Martin Corless-Smith
https://fenceportal.org/book/bitter-green-2/