Meet StS Assistant Poetry Editor

Brezner says

Feminism is important to me because everyone deserves the same opportunities and the same respect. Traditional gender roles, which limit the possible realms of experience for all involved, have been baked into our institutions, our interactions, and our self-concepts for eons and are still prevalent today. As a white, heterosexual male, I have a lot of privilege. I’ve spent a lot of years having the world reflect a “Thumbs up, buddy,” at me more often than I deserve. I’ve benefited in both concrete and fungible ways. It’s my responsibility to actively contribute to a more equitable redistribution of privilege. Helping put the voices of feminist poets out into the world is one small way that I can do that.

Ben’s Book Recommendations

Brezner says, The many-sided splendor of the color blue becomes Maggie Nelson’s muse in Bluets. She gives herself up to blue, both literally and metaphorically, in this serial pastiche of a woman’s obsession with all things blue, including her own distance and apathy. The researched references provide objective inter-texts that undergird the subjective backbone of the auto-narratives that Nelson’s author-speaker, weaves.

Brezner says, In duende, Tracy K. Smith moves through time and space to poke at both personal and public examples of injustice. Often blending lyric and narrative, Smith can be as serious as genocide, and lighthearted enough to invite Zappa to her family picnic. This wide range of modes and moods, allows Smith to capture the mixed emotions, the bittersweet-ness of duende’s dull ache.