House Lions is Wesleyan’s resident poetry podcast. To hear fresh featured poets read their poems live and talk about their work check out the House Lions weekly featured reader. Look for information about live recording sessions in the Shapiro Creative Writing Center, and a new featured poet each Monday. For more information, or to express interest in being on the show, shoot an email to sknittle@wesleyan.edu.
This week’s poet: Lizzie Greenwald:
Lizzie Greenwald’s poetry reads like a tour through a personal journal with a metal detector that is wired to look for gold. Lizzie uses the space of the home as a focal point or as a gymnastic event, moving in and around it, closer to it and further away to test the pull that comes with various suggestions of distance. Lizzie has an astute attention to physical details and uses an excellent suspension of sonic play that is grounded in a link between what the body experiences and where and how it moves. This makes for poems that are both immediately familiar and endlessly engaging.
Bio: Lizzie Greenwald was born and raised on Long Island, New York where she was surrounded by love and comfort. There, she became infatuated with words, rhythm, and music, and the ways in which they all fit together.
Print and audio poems after the jump.
Arch
He describes it all at once as the repeated
Dressing in plaid pajamas
And teeth brushing before bed
As some storm persisting through August
I’m unwelcome, but so is she
With her fingernails cracked and spackled
And her rabbits and her jazz and your
Buttoned shirt tucked round her waist and
Your hands
Tattooed to my eyelashes blinking
Back the purple sweaters and
Blends of corduroys and couches
The night before Thanksgiving,
A reason for pause
A sparseness unbearable and a headache
Piled clothes, flowered carpet
Too loud to even interrupt
[argusaudio src=”http://wesleyanargus.com/audio/lizziearch.mp3″] Arch
[argusaudio src=”http://wesleyanargus.com/audio/lizziecar.mp3″] Car
[argusaudio src=”http://wesleyanargus.com/audio/lizziegirl.mp3″] Girl
[argusaudio src=”http://wesleyanargus.com/audio/lizziefull.mp3″] Full Interview