Maya Jewell Zeller

"Maya Zeller's American Northwest is a land of verdant sensuality, insistent yet fragile and intimate as it was in the eyes of Roethke, storied in mossy and weathered details, human ruin and hard won grace as it was in the heart of Kesey. With extraordinary veracity and empathy she inhabits the body and emerging consciousness of a girl and young woman alive to the lives around her. There are poetry books with the power to move poets, fewer poetry books with the power to move lovers of literature, and those rare poetry books with the power to move just about anyone else. Rust Fish is all three." -Jonathan Johnson Maya Jewell Zeller grew up in the Pacific Northwest. She currently lives in Spokane with her husband and daughter, and teaches English at Gonzaga University.

Poems

Rust Fish

Kathryn Nuernberger

A text for practiced poets, this book offers a springboard beyond the basics into more daring poetic traditions, experimentation and methods. It lays out the myriad conversations influencing contemporary poetics, paying attention to its roots in historical and theoretical thinking. With a focus on innovation and breaking established boundaries, Advanced Poetry introduces you to the poetics shaping the contemporary literary moment, first guiding you through the contexts and principles of these forms using a range of practical examples, before prompting you to pick up the pen yourself. Spanning decades and continents, and covering the rich field of poets writing today, this book shows how to read, explicate, and write poetry and includes discussion of: - received traditions and innovative forms - confessional and epistolary poetry - aesthetic experimentation with voice - methods and theories developed by early Surrealists -deep image and the poetics of spells - ecopoetics & poetry of place - writing the body based on queer theory and disability studies - docupoetics and lyric research - racial imaginaries and poetics of liberation - digital poetics - writing in community with other poets and collaborative, interdisciplinary projects - revision processes and putting together a collection or chapbook -advice on writing artist statements and other professional materials Bringing together a comprehensive craft guide with a carefully collated anthology showcasing the (existing) limits of what is possible in poetry, this text explores how poetry since the 20th century has embraced traditional structures, borrowed from other disciplines, and invented wildly new forms. With close readings, writing prompts, excerpts of interviews from key figures in the field and a supplementary companion website, this is the definitive text for any poet looking to continue their poetic journey.

A Writer's Guide and Anthology

Advanced Poetry

Alchemy for Cells & Other Beasts charts a course into magical waters, anchoring itself in the frightening politicization of a woman's body. The chemistry of this conversation includes pomegranates for human heads, bones that can walk, and a ship sprung from a person's back, "floating farther from shore." The speaker in these incantations, behind these urgent watercolors, muses on the philosophies of geologic time, climate change, human genomes, and existential destruction. This book sets out to discover meaning in this terrible, beautiful time -- and suggests wonder is where we'll find it: "the diagnosis is strong / for the wild & wind mills." Full Color.

Maya Jewell Zeller

Books

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