"Some Answers May Appear More than Once"

This past week, I had the honor of sharing space with Lauren Goodwin Slaughter in the most recent issue of Shenandoah. guest edited beautifully by Samyak Shertok. I first came to know Lauren when she published one of my poems in NELLE, an incredible literary magazine for women, and have admired her and her work for many years now.

This issue of Shenandoah was dedicated to poems written in form and also includes two ekphrastic poems by Victoria Chang. Lauren’s poem, Some Answers May Appear More than Once, Others Not at All, is one of the coolest experimental form poems I have ever read! It harkens back to high school “word bank tests” in which you would have a series of vocabulary terms to choose from in order to complete an answer on a test. It showed that you understood the vocabulary term by putting it in context. Lauren’s poem takes this concept and builds something truly brilliant—a “test,” if you will, in which some words could be used “accurately” in context for many answers while others cannot (?) be used at all.

Thank you to all who signed up for my last summer workshop, “Morning in the Burned House!” It is now sold out. I am taking a break from virtual workshops in July and August (though I may run a pop-up in August), but check out my fall offerings HERE!