First, I’m excited to share the release of a podcast interview I did for The Tell Don’t Show. I had a great time talking with Katie Marya and Kasey Peters about Rotura (Black Lawrence Press), our various younger siblings, and the single line stanza.
the flyer for this weekend’s virtual event
Also, I’m excited to participate in Malaprop’s Bookstore / Cafe’s Virtual POETRIO monthly poetry event coordinated by Mildred Barya. I have the pleasure of reading alongside Danita Dodson and Cathryn Hankla.
WHAT: Malaprop’s Virtual POETRIO poetry event featuring José Angel Araguz, Danita Dodson, and Cathryn Hankla WHEN: Sunday, June 5, 2022 – 4:00pm EDT WHERE: online REGISTRATION: Click here to RSVP. (The form will open in a new tab or window.) Prior to the event, you will be sent a reminder email with the link required to attend.
Looking forward to this event!
I’m still catching up on things but will have more to share soon. Thank you to everyone who has supported Roturawhether it’s by picking up a copy, coming to a virtual event, or just reading excerpts available online! It all means a great deal–muchisimas gracias!
I had a chance to spend time with this collection pre-publication. Here’s the blurb I wrote:
Laura Cesarco Eglin’s Time/Tempo is a meditation on time unlike any other. Where time is often viewed as a limited resource, a reminder of our mortality and an immovable structure in our lives inevitably to be reckoned with, Eglin’s poems invite us into a deeper contemplation where one is asked to consider “What is left of me after I’ve left a place, after it has left me.” This visceral logic and sensibility make of time not only a companion but a dimension of self, and it is here where these poems most speak to the human experience. Eglin joins Emily Dickinson and Octavio Paz in her pursuit and engagement with what can be learned from the space between the ephemeral and everlasting. –José Angel Araguz, Ph.D., author of Rotura (Black Lawrence Press)
The poem below, “Learning Time,” embodies a number of the qualities I point out here. The poem starts off with a simple enough admission. The voice, however, continues building off the initial observation, eventually developing a meditation whose sense of intimacy lies somewhere between philosophy and diary. The result is a poem whose turns and logic feel both urgent and personal.
The ending of this poem is one of my favorite moments in the book. Cutting off mid-sentence on the word “Clouds” creates a jolt in the momentum of the poem which evokes the feeling the speaker has been lyricizing around. It is a moment at once tongue-in-cheek but also visceral, showing that humor and insight are born of the same material.
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Laura Cesarco Eglin
Learning Time
It rained yesterday and I missed it.
What happens simultaneously doesn’t wait for witnesses and grows in the air to then come down, touch the trees at varying speeds and leave the summer green a few moments removed. That’s how it rains again. Rain’s repeated, rain is multiple and plural in its singularity.
Puddles in the parking lot say there was a different picture moving its way through a before. Clouds
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Copies of Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath by Laura Cesarco Eglin can be purchased from PRESS 254.
The Influence 