Brenda Shaughnessy

Jun 15, 2024 | citylights.com | Marcelo Hernandez Castillo |Brenda Shaughnessy

"In the collection, which takes its title from the Spanish word for birdsong, to sing of one's undocumented life is to risk being consumed by it: 'The song becoming / the bird becoming / the song, ' the poet writes. 'The bird unraveled its song and became undone.' And yet, in the collection's first poem, the desire to tell the story is also inescapable." -The Paris Review"Castillo resists resignation to silence; his poems embody a belief in art's transformative ability.

Sep 18, 2023 | yalereview.org | Brenda Shaughnessy

Brenda Shaughnessy Humans need shelter and space—but beauty eyes space for itself. Air is a medium, a mere translator a mule—predetermined life as carrier unto Death. I want molecules upon moleculesto ebb out my eyes and enter my mouth, are you molecules? Do you dare smoke in winter for the sex air? Soliloquy has it out for me, handling inner space like an amphitheater of all middle seats. Can’t hear myself? Or can’t remember? Or forgot I heard.

Jul 6, 2023 | poetryfoundation.org | Brenda Shaughnessy

When we get to Andromeda, Cal, you’ll have the babyhood you deserved, all the groping at light sockets and putting sand in your mouth and learning to say Mama and I want and sprinting down the yard as if to show me how you were leaving me for the newest outpost of Cal. You’ll get the chance to walk without pain, as if such a thing were a matter of choosing a song over a book, of napping at noon instead of fighting it.

Mar 27, 2023 | nytimes.com | Amy Gerstler |Brenda Shaughnessy |Alfred A. Knopf

Book Review|Love, Absence and Loss, Filtered Through Philosophical Poemshttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/27/books/review/tanya-poems-brenda-shaughnessy.htmlPoetryIn Brenda Shaughnessy’s collection “Tanya,” the self is fluid and love is “timelessness itself.”Send any friend a storyAs a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.