My poem Bird/Rose/Moon, which appears in the winter 2023 issue of Indianapolis Review, belongs to an ongoing project that responds to contemporary poems and ideas about poetry. The majority of poems in this project do so in a much less direct way than this one does. Bird/Rose/Moon started from my frustration with a fussy lists about what should or should not be included, and as I shaped these thoughts through repetition, it shifted into my frustration with the types of content that editors and and other gatekeepers say they value in poetry but, in fact, only value when that content also reflects certain biases and familiarities. This is similar to one of the main points made in Raye Hendrix, Alyssandra Tobin, Bethan Tyler, and KB Brookins’ panel at AWP, “Neuronasty: A Poetics”: that despite claims in the contemporary poetry world to want raw, experimental writing, the work of neurodivergent poets’ is often seen as going too far. The difference is that I see content that is not considered “too far” but, rather, simply not considered.
Erringnesses in Perfection Class (Finnegans Wake 279.n1)
