LINE LEVEL #3
Welcome to LINE LEVEL: Craft Lessons from Poets of Color, a monthly column in which writer, editor, and educator Joanna Acevedo zooms in on an element of craft from the work of BIPOC poets. LINE LEVEL unfolds in three parts:…
Category: General
Poetry: The Whale by Evan Wang
There is an earnestness to the inward reflection that comes from the boy in this poem, who is moved by a whale. He slowly uncovers the hatred of men, the fear of what one might become, and the urge to…
Poetry: sargassum by Louise Kim
There is beauty in release. A freedom in succumbing to the water that envelopes us. Louise Kim shows us, with rich texture and calming imagery, that there is a lushness in letting go. Looking up and glimpsing the light can…
Poetry: The Woods in May Are This Still by Leland Seese
The implied sterility of a hospital bed; communication through a tablet; processing death in a sterile environment. These experiences during hospice care are contrasted beautifully with changing seasons in Leland Seese’s poem. The silence of the words a fatherly specter…
Poetry: self-portrait as icarus in the labyrinth by Ashleigh Xindan Kennedy
In Ashleigh Xindan Kennedy’s poem, the reader is trapped between past and present, longing and loss, put into the perspective of both Icarus and the Minotaur. The narrator explores what it is to be human or maybe not human at…
LINE LEVEL #2
Welcome to LINE LEVEL: Craft Lessons from Poets of Color, a monthly column in which writer, editor, and educator Joanna Acevedo zooms in on an element of craft from the work of BIPOC poets. LINE LEVEL unfolds in three parts:…
Poetry: Ars Poetica by Divyasri Krishnan
Divyasri Krishnan’s “Ars Poetica” perfectly balances the pastoral image of a flighty canary with the urban one of languishing on a train. These two central scenes build a sense of tension, an ode to liminal life spaces– to the “beauty…
Poetry: Summer Love by Winshen Liu
It might be nostalgia, it might be the winter world around us, but we’re desperate for this poem of summer by Winshen Liu. In the midst of wherever you may be, let her latest poem sun your head and fill…
Poetry: STUDYING THE WORLD by Pamilerin Jacob
Pamilerin Jacob is a poet of density, imagery stacked and tactile and bouncing into your ankles—their latest, “STUDYING THE WORLD,” gives to us a speaker wrestling with understanding itself, seeking the joy of knowing without the burden of outcome. STUDYING THE…
Poetry: Betrayal: Or, When a Poet Translates Another Poet by Weijia Pan
Weijia Pan’s latest work wrestles with the moon like a monk wrestles with prayer. It asks in the moonlight: what poet has not translated?—has not archived and assimilated?—has not turned a poem’s ending silence into their fitfully aspirant beginning? Betrayal:…
