Maya C. Popa Reads Brenda Shaughnessy

Maya C. Popa's 'The World Was All Before Them' is a compact lyric that engages sonnetal rhythms while exploring the tension between selfhood and the beloved's gaze. Drawing on Miltonic echoes, the poem treats the speaker as both sovereign and invented, considering how worship and idealization can lead to disillusionment. Popa's language is tactile and imagistic—ankles, veins, and Eden motifs converge to question the sustainability of an exalted love. The poem plays with legal and mythic resonances, such as the Thessalian moon trick, to suggest debts delayed and the ephemerality of romantic Eden. Published in The New Yorker, it exemplifies Popa's interest in lyrical accountability and literary conversation.

Brenda Shaughnessy's 'Artless' is a poem that deploys playful sonic repetition and inventive neologisms to interrogate the heart's contradictions and absences. Through tercets and recurring 'less' sounds, the poem creates a formal cohesion that both defamiliarizes and deepens emotional resonance. Its speaker balances humor and heartbreak, using negation and reversals to explore love, absence, and the limits of poetic description. The poem showcases Shaughnessy's capacity to invent language and form suited to a poem's psychological needs, making the 'artless' heart simultaneously elemental and richly articulated. Published in The New Yorker in 2011, it is frequently noted for its musicality and tonal agility.

The Prelude is a seminal work of English Romantic literature, written in blank verse. It was intended as the prologue to a larger epic poem, The Recluse, but Wordsworth completed only The Prelude and parts of The Excursion. The poem narrates Wordsworth's spiritual and intellectual journey, using literal journeys as metaphors for his inner growth. It emphasizes the importance of personal emotion, the natural world, and the interconnectedness of human experience and nature, key elements of Romanticism.

In this powerful gathering of poems, Brenda Shaughnessy weaves a tapestry of literary heritage and intimate reflection. She pays tribute to women artists and mentors, including Dadaist artist Meret Oppenheim and the young choreographer Lauren Lovette. The title poem explores an intense touchstone relationship with Tanya, while other poems delve into memories of the women who set her on her artistic path. The book features flowing stair-step tercets that expose moments of spiritual and intellectual awakening, her love of art, and the written word, ignited by conversations with other women across time and space.