In late December of 2022, Matthew Walther published an opinion column that “Poetry Died 100 Years Ago This Month” in the New York Times. Poor Walther was mourning Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” but he doesn’t seem to be reading anything new.
As a counter-example for Poor Walther, when I opened my March issue of Poetry and had my first encounter with Rodolfo Avelar’s “Joxtland Epic,” I felt unaccountably happy. Okay, I suppose I can account for my reaction: the poem is a visual object, is, as I’ve always experienced, like sculpture; the poem is sensual and sexual; and it can live its life on the page. Can live so fully that Avelar’s poem folds out into a four page spread (perhaps a pun, perhaps not). The poem breaks boundaries, not just figuratively—as the speaker uses metaphors (flower, wire, hair) to navigate a transgender body—but literally—as it bursts from the magazine into flower.
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