LINE LEVEL #16 CHAT
Welcome to LINE LEVEL CHAT!
Launched in 2023, LINE LEVEL is a monthly column started by writer, editor, and educator Joanna Acevedo, focusing on craft lessons from the recent or forthcoming work of contemporary poets of color. LINE LEVEL CHAT invites contributors to answer a few questions about craft which will continue to add to the conversation, create more resources and more accessibility, and serve as further context for the goals which LINE LEVEL aspires to achieve.
This month, our March LINE LEVEL #16 contributor Thalia Geiger is giving us a preview of her thoughts on craft before her LINE LEVEL feature later in the month. Her chapbook, Wild Like A Woman will be available from Finishing Line Press in 2025, pre-orders can be found on the site.
What do you think an awareness of craft adds to a poem?
I think it gives it a backbone, in the sense that because of that awareness, the poem can then have the opportunity to stand confidently in its abilities.
If you had to have dinner with one poem, which poem would it be, and why?
Probably, “I Remember the Carrots” by Ada Limón. That poem always makes me think of my autonomy and how free we all could be, and I would love to have a long, deep conversation with it over some wine.
At the end of the dinner, who do you think would pick up the check?
Likely me, although maybe it could be neither of us. Especially if we both felt so refreshed with that idea that we can do whatever we desire, even though it might seem bad, we might just dine-and-dash like bad, excitable children. Normally my conscience would scream at me, but I’d be tempted to also seize the day in the same manner of “kill[ing] the carrots because I can”!
Now, answer the same questions again, but with three sentences for the first question and one or the third question. You can keep your answer to your second question unchanged.
What do you think an awareness of craft adds to a poem?
It gives it a backbone! Both in the sense of the poem being able to stand more confidently in its abilities, and in the physical-sense, as a structural spine. When a poet is making such intentional choices regarding craft, it lends a great deal of support for the rest of the poem to rely on.
If you had to have dinner with one poem, which poem would it be, and why?
Probably, “I Remember the Carrots” by Ada Limón. That poem always makes me think of my autonomy and how free we all could be, and I would love to have a long, deep conversation with it over some wine.
At the end of the dinner, who do you think would pick up the check?
No one—we’d have to live our lives like the bad, excitable children we are by dining and dashing!
Thalia Geiger is a poetry editor and author of the chapbook Wild Like a Woman (Finishing Line Press, 2025). Her debut poetry collection, Red Death, Purple Dark, is forthcoming from Thirty West Publishing. She is the winner of Black Fox Literary’s 2025 Summer Fox Tales Contest, and her work has been featured in New York Quarterly, Allegory Ridge, Coffin Bell, Grim & Gilded and more. She hails from Philadelphia, where she works in journal publishing. You can find her on Instagram and BlueSky @thalierr.
