Women's Voices For Change

Shirley Geok-Lin Lim’s poems are set in the circumscribed worlds of home and Academia, but this is merely the way the author accesses larger issues of exile, identity, and artistic inspiration.

The careful balance S.J. Sloat strikes between elements of erasure and visual art in each poem reveals new depths upon multiple readings. The compressed lyrics sing of introspection and offer wisdom, and they are richly enhanced by the inspired variety and ingenuity of erasure modalities and concrete imagery.

Today’s is a love poem for everyone and a model for how to love expansively and wholly. It embraces us and loves us for who we are and what we do, and its range allows each of us to feel seen and recognized.

The poem is a love song both to my husband and to a city that I find endlessly fascinating and frustrating, and that I miss, especially in this travel-free year. —Chloe Martinez

Today’s poem by Alicia Ostriker reminds us of “our earnestness our sincerity / in first grade when we learned” the song, suggesting that such qualities might be part of why these lyrics stick with us so long.

Joy Harjo’s “An American Sunrise” is the title poem of a collection concerned with years of violence against and displacement of Native Americans at the hands of settler colonists.

To enter the spirit houses, storage units, and myriad spaces Maw Shein Win opens for us in the pages of her new collection is to enter a universe where familiar objects and structures take on new shapes and significance.

As a Black Woman, I needed to tell this story of Black Women adapting, thriving, living, and/or dying in suboptimal conditions.