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Kent Shaw

Kent Shaw

@kentdshaw.bsky.social

130 followers 160 following 200 posts

Second book: Too Numerous (UMass Press, 2019). CW Prof (Wheaton College in MA). US Navy veteran.

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Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · 4d

"Nordgren’s book is hard for me to describe. Maybe it’s writing that got caught in costume. Dressed as a period piece for a fashion magazine."

from my goodreads review of Sarah Rose Nordgren's Feathers: A Bird-Hat Wearer's Journal
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Feathers

5/5: Nordgren’s book is hard for me to describe. Maybe it’s writing that got caught in costume. Dressed as a period piece for a fashion magazine. Maybe it’s an occasional notebook for inscribing obser...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · 10d

"It’s like Ashbery wants you to combine a lava lamp with a villanelle. First, a line with an imaginative twist on a present circumstance, and by the next line it’s morphed into a different shape."

from my goodreads review of Hotel Lautréamont, by John Ashbery
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Hotel Lautréamont

4/5: I don’t think it had occurred to me why I should read Ashbery through Wallace Stevens before this book. Like poetic history is clear that the two are connected, and I could see the sense to it. B...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · 27d

"The relationship between irony and wonder often feels uneven to me. Irony is so tall, incisive, and imposing on a sentence or a poem"

from my goodreads review of Rosmarie Waldrop's The Nick of Time
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of The Nick of Time

5/5: The relationship between irony and wonder often feels uneven to me. Irony is so tall, incisive, and imposing on a sentence or a poem. Yes, I appreciate what irony can bring to a moment. But often...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Sep 28

"In Zhou’s book, the triangulation is more sustained. Which allows for especially evocative commentary on who she perceives herself to be, and who she is now after the different pressures that come with adulthood."

from my goodreads review of Amelia Zhou's Repose
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Repose

5/5: How is the self formed? And should this self-actualization be staged as a form-ing process or a formationed reality? These, to me, are the underlying questions of Amelia Zhou’s book. Like how poe...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Sep 23

"In here, doing-ness revolves mainly around the temporality or shapeliness of an impression. What it takes to experience a moment, while many other moments inflect upon your experience of that moment."

from my goodreads review of Bill Carty's We Sailed on the Lake
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of We Sailed on the Lake

5/5: There is a shape to the poetic impressions in Bill Carty’s We Sailed on the Lake. A shape like a lake, I suppose. If you think of “shape” as what a lake looks like when you’re watching the mist h...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Sep 17

If you like clowns of all sorts, Sreshtha Sen's poem, "Exceprt from Crown Clown[ed]" (originally in Action, Spectacle) is for you. I was definitely feeling it, so I wrote a close read.

thekalliope.org/excerpt-from...

"Excerpt from Clown Crown[ed]," by Sreshtha Sen - theKalliope

A close reading of Sreshtha Sen's poem, "Excerpt from Crown Clown[ed]." Published originally in Action, Spectacle.

thekalliope.org

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Sep 15

"One of the challenges to life is knowing how to treat the mundane like it’s meaningless. Which is why I would say Ashbery is resigned to letting LOTS just be his life."

from my book review of John Ashbery's Can You Hear, Bird
thekalliope.org/lets-expansi...

Let's expansive the mundane! - theKalliope

A book review of John Ashbery's book Can You Hear, Bird.

thekalliope.org

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Sep 5

"Is the poet's childhood authentic in the way she has learned authenticity from outside sources? From friends or even acquaintances she remembers meeting once, which she describes in “A Lunch Date.”"

from my goodreads review of Jennifer Chang's An Authentic Life
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of An Authentic Life

5/5: What I have often admired in Chang’s work is this central lyric concern. Or a fountain of lyric thinking that starts, say, with a juxtaposition between “ocean” and “anonymity.” That generates a l...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Sep 1

"Bolsover’s book is like the sharp inquisitive stance Anne Carson maintains about Greek mythology, but lay that inquisition on this bed of striking red petals.

from my goodreads review of Tessa Bolsover's Crane
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Crane

5/5: The argument for poetry or lyric sensibility can require many words, sometimes arranged so the wording feels less like words, or maybe it feels more like words. Poetry can be wordy. Lyric prose c...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Aug 28

"With pringle, though, it’s the membrane between self and outside the self. The social pressures that come when an individual thinks, I might be belonging to a ‘we’ right now.”

from my goodreads review of kathryn l. pringle's Obscenity for the Advancement of Poetry
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of obscenity for the advancement of poetry

4/5: There will always be a struggle and a contradiction when you’re trying to understand a self, especially your own self. Because while you might center on what makes yourself a self viewing itself,...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Aug 25

"The book is concerned with darkness, coupled with the perspective clouded by how familiar the poet is with this darkness."

from my goodreads review of John Sibley Williams's Skin Memory
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Skin Memory

4/5: There’s a structure to the present. Or there’s a significance felt in the present moment that can feel like poetry, and for John Sibley Williams’s book, feeling poetry implies there is a poetic s...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Aug 15

"I am bought in to the book’s overarching concept, its keen interest in cybernetics and AI. Its inquiry into human experience. How much of being human involves occupying the natural world?"

from my goodreads review of Olga Ravn's The Employees
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of The Employees

4/5: Books with subjects and definite intentions on saying something about the subject can be difficult for me to read. Like On Walden Pond Henry David Thoreau: Walden Henry Thoreau, difficult to read...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Aug 6

"Xanax Cowboy is as much an extended monologue of mistaken identity as they are a WTF is this identity I’m being mistaken for. And, yes, there is outrage compelling the poems forward."

from my goodreads review of Hannah Green's Xanax Cowboy
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Xanax Cowboy

5/5: Hannah Green is such a poser. Or Xanax Cowboy is. Or the “Hannah Green” who’s made this character to explain her life as a young adult. Whatever term you think fits when a poet invents a persona,...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Aug 5

I think T. S. Eliot's "First Voice" vs "Second Voice" can provide an interesting angle for reading Rodney Gomez's poem, "Genealogy" (found originally at The Boiler). Or that's what I'm talking about here:

thekalliope.org/genealogy-by...

"Genealogy," by Rodney Gomez - theKalliope

A close reading of Rodney Gomez's poem, "Genealogy," originally published in The Boiler

thekalliope.org

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Aug 2

"Willis’s book privileges the frayed edges of historical record. It's like visiting an archive, and you’ve been sifting through materials for the whole day, and now it’s everywhere on the table."

from my goodreads review of Elizabeth Willis's Liontaming in America
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Liontaming in America

5/5: After reading Willis’s book, I’m personally convinced an official start to human history can be located by those who are persistent enough. Everyone knows what it is. Just look behind you, like a...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Jul 25

I feel like I also could have said Abigail Chabitnoy's "Hawking Rabbit Feet in the Age of Disbelief" uses an organic form to uncover its argument. I said this instead.

thekalliope.org/hawking-rabb...

"Hawking Rabbit Feet in the Age of Disbelief," by Abigail Chabitnoy - theKalliope

A close reading of Abigail Chabitnoy's poem, "Hawking Rabbit Feet in the Age of Disbelief." Originally found in Summer 2023 Action, Spectacle

thekalliope.org

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Jul 24

"Let’s face it, Ashbery is the most there poet there is. The poetics of suddenly realizing, but burying all that sudden realization in rhetoric so that it’s not all the time clear there was a there there."

from my goodreads review of John Ashbery's April Galleons
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of April Galleons

5/5: There’s a wisdom to knowing how much of the world around you might be available to you, and how much more of it will merely exist. Trees in blossom. Your uncertainty which of the days it will be ...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Jul 23

What I really enjoy about Stefania Gomez's poem "Wreck" is its occupation of a between. It can be silly. It can be somber. And it's the occupation between those I'm trying to write about on my blog.

thekalliope.org/wreck-by-ste...

"Wreck," by Stefania Gomez - theKalliope

There is this line in the middle of Stefania Gomez’s poem, Wreck. She’s referring to these firemen who were at the scene of her car wreck, and she says they couldn’t manage fear. I think this speaks t...

thekalliope.org

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Jul 18

I'd like to think this is a fair, critical reading of Emily Lee Luan's book, Return. And what I mean by critical is I register my delight that the book accomplishes its ambition.

thekalliope.org/sorrow-frame...

Sorrow, Framed: A book review for Emily Lee Luan's Return - theKalliope

I have an initial review of Emily Lee Luan’s Return at goodreads. But I’ve thought to further elaborate on it after my close reading of the book’s final poem, “From weeping into weeping.” Emily Lee Lu...

thekalliope.org

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Jul 17

"A city can serve an individual’s ennui, and within that flat affect can exist the urge to say something new, to notice someone who would have gone overlooked, or to stir a fantasy."

from my goodreads review of Charles Baudelaire's Paris Spleen
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of Paris Spleen

5/5: What is a city? Which seems like a sensible question. But it’s not. Because there are ways a city is what people want to find in a city. In many of Baudelaire’s prose poems, he alludes to the spe...

www.goodreads.com

Reposted by Kent Shaw

Kim Andrews @kqandrews.bsky.social · Jul 15

Hi yes the coda of my book touches upon this as well as like three articles I have recently written about the inefficiency of humanistic study!! I will be annoying about this forever probably!

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · Jul 15

To my mind, the conversation about reading stamina or other such related concerns must begin with an analysis of where, exactly, students feel the freedom to slow down and pursue the inefficient forms of exploration coded into such models of intentional thought.

Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · Jul 15

Honestly an abomination that the current austerity model of education is fundamentally allergic to the idea of small seminar-style learning, the form that spent several thousand years as the holy grail of educating learners in complex subjects.

Reposted by Kent Shaw

Jesse Lee Kercheval @jesselkercheval.bsky.social · Jul 10

Submissions OPEN for the Wisconsin Poetry Series @uwiscpress.bsky.social ! Daniel Borzutzky is this year's judge for the Wisconsin Translation Prize! Airea D. Matthews for the Brittingham and Pollak Prize. Finalists are also chosen for publication! wicw.submittable.com/submit

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Jul 10

"Because so much of this book smells. Like if you’re going to read it, prepare to be nauseous. Prepare to laugh at how the world is."

from my goodreads review of Kim Hyesoon's All the Garbage of the World, Unite!
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of All the Garbage of the World, Unite!

5/5: Something happened here. Something got stuck in a hole. Something sick. Like how garbage is sick. Like some people might talk about having baggage from previous relationships, and it feels like a...

www.goodreads.com

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Jul 9

Reading Emily Lee Luan's "From weeping into weeping," I realize how impressionable I am. It's like I want to give in to as many readings as I think the poem suggests.

I talk about that in this blog post:
thekalliope.org/from-weeping...

"From weeping into weeping," by Emily Lee Luan - theKalliope

What surprises me about Emily Lee Luan’s poem ”From weeping into weeping” (found in her book Return (Nightboat, 2023)) is how sadness is present for the poet. Like the poem is definitely sad, and it p...

thekalliope.org

Kent Shaw @kentdshaw.bsky.social · Jul 5

"I read the book like I’m reading the B-sides of Letters to Wendy’s. And to be specific, the B-sides of Dead Letter Office to Document that happened with REM over the Amnesiac to Kid A of Radiohead."

from my goodreads review of Joe Wenderoth's It Is If I Speak
www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Kent's review of It Is If I Speak

4/5: It’s hard for me not to read this in the context of the year 2000. The year Wenderoth had published Letters to Wendy’s with Verse Press. A book that got a lot of attention, and, I would argue, co...

www.goodreads.com