Triptychs

Sandra Simonds is the author of Atopia (Wesleyan University Press, 2019), Orlando, (Wave Books, 2018), Further Problems with Pleasure, winner of the 2015 Akron Poetry Prize (University of Akron, 2017), Steal It Back (Saturnalia Books, 2015), The Sonnets (Bloof Books, 2014), Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012), and Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2009). Her poems have been included in the Best American Poetry 2015 and 2014 and have appeared in the New York Times, Poetry, the American Poetry Review, the Chicago Review, Granta, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Fence, Court Green, and Lana Turner. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida and is an Associate professor of English and Humanities at Thomas University in Thomasville, Georgia.

• TABLE OF CONTENTSI Gave Birth in Another EraBildungsromanReading The Bell Jar in Everglades National ParkGong! Gong! Gong!Now that You’re Dead, I’m Observing Great Bodies of WaterWith Joy with No JoyNow Wait for Last YearLet’s Make the Water Turn BlackAnd the Days Shall be Filled with MusicThe Poet Enters Through the Subjunctive MoodSketches for My Sweetheart the DrunkI Sang a Song with the DeadMarch PandémiePlanting a Loquat Tree During the Worst Week of the PandemicAs in the Pyroclastic VolcanoThe Future is Not What it WasYour Eyes Resemble MinePoem with Three Lines by Gustaf SobinDollar Tree PoiesisTick Tock CrypticHold! Said the Hand Said the MoneyTo Take a Lover in the Intricately Woven KaleidoscopeDear Anselm,Pastoral in the Minor KeyThe Only Cloud in the Sky to Impress me with a Demoniacal GrandeurThe Password is Hex Key 526The Flammagenitus StrophesSkate World WaveformIt was Raining in the French ConcessionDouble Happiness or “Modernity Means Contingency”Trashland Political EconomyAn Equanimous Defense of the Exclamation PointNew Year’s RequiemMakeup Pollen OintmentI Bought You a Bonsai Cypress Tree on the Way to the ShoreOn Avondale and Riverside

Fevered and philosophical, Simonds’s fierce lyric rages against capitalism and patriarchy for stifling compassion and collective imagination" —New Yorker"Simonds paints a careful portrait of the struggle to embrace difficult realities in an age in which it would be irresponsible to ignore them, even if doing so offers no easy path forward. "—starred review for ATOPIA, Publishers Weekly