Jan Beatty

Sep 12, 2024 | therumpus.net | Jan Beatty

“Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

Aug 30, 2024 | pghcitypaper.com | Rege Behe |Jan Beatty

In her latest collection, Dragstripping (University of Pittsburgh Press), Jan Beatty includes numerous poems about her father, who died almost 40 years ago, in 1986. “I keep thinking that I’m done with him, and it just keeps happening,” Beatty tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “I’m still wearing my father’s ring. I’m still very close to him. I’m not going to turn it down. I’m grateful that I’m still getting poems.

May 22, 2024 | newsbreak.com | Jan Beatty

For my birth father I wish I had the dust of you, a grave to visit. I’m running on your sea legs right now, tired of the little bits—not even leftovers. I’m a tourist in your life and I wonder: Does your heart have its own body? This sentence is not a body. Nothing. Nothing is a body until there are arms around it.

Mar 19, 2024 | poets.org | Jan Beatty |Carol Muske-Dukes

Find and share the perfect poems. They say I have attachment disorder from years in the orphanage—I say I’m attached to dirt: to the grit  of stones, pulverized metal from  the slag heap, I learned touch from air, I fashioned love from strangers. Your families make no sense to me. My mother’s the 4 barrel of a 409, my heart’s dragstripped from the shredded tires of predators. Go ahead, think of me— throw the red flag down.

Feb 19, 2023 | theatlantic.com | Jan Beatty

February 19, 2023, 8 AM ETI was born for betrayal— When my mother left me in the orphanage,I invented love with strangers.   And if it wasn’t there, I made it be there,until the crash, the revelation. They say blues is three chords and the truth—And poetry is long-lined lies and a deep dive into the body’s costly river.