"notes regarding this hole in the wind" by Mathilda Cullen (twitter/podcast/press/books). "Some poems collected from a while ago and some recent stuff, also an erasure I did of Rilke's sonnets to Orpheus for someone special." notes is also similarly longer like the previous submission, and also clocks in at about 40 pages. Mathilda is a friend I am blessed to know and work with and what she produces herself as a writer and through her micro press is just some really amazing stuff. Unsurprisingly, everything about this chapbook is just wonderful too. It's full of taste, skill, good execution, and enjoyable design. The cover itself really points to the aesthetic in a lot of what she puts together. A very almost architectural approach not just to the feel of her work (and here I mean true architecture. Not modernism or contemporary design. Architecture used to be a show of flare or esteemed flamboyancy, but it does require calculation and structure and her breakdown and analyses of poetry itself also tends to do just that.) but also to her understanding of the medium she operates within; comes through. The first sentence done and you already know you're getting something special. Some of the work in here I believe I may have read parts of previously, but it doesn't matter. The collection is carrying her belief in both non-traditional anything but that writing can do and be more than it is. She is one of my cherished and trusted communist poet comrades and this really is a story of life within capitalism and the power of language to address and motivate against it.

There are a lot of one-liners that stick with you from already amazing poems. It's impossible to pick a pulled quote with such a variety provided. "A country is only / as large as the cops maintaining it.", "Soundless, a warship sits / in the harbor, another ornament / of empire to dress the deaths of this:", "i have taken shape from supposed visions, accidental collages, and family photographs; all of which were never mine and never could be, but which i’ve since lost;", and "do you have any idea what that flag has done. the planes i consume on my morning commute are nothing if not cancerous. grasp for air. yeah, choke it." just as examples for the playground of literary composition she provides in the first half. It's difficult for me to do it justice because I think it's such an intricate and significant construction you really have to focus and reread it to give it the full attention it deserves. When someone uses every beautiful word already, so thoughtfully, what are you supposed to say, when you don't even know if you have that same mastery over words? I know she and I both think of "genius" as a eugenicist concept, and that words don't belong to any one kind of person and shouldn't be forced anywhere. It's hard to convey what "ownership of true talent" means when you're someone who is rather against the endless stream of individual ownership of anything. I think that makes sense, at least to say she really feels like a woman raising poems as her children and that her influence has shaped them devoutly yet on the page they exist as their own entities. Distinctly hers and yet not simple extensions of herself.

The second half gets into erasure sonnets and they look amazing. They're scanned in images from a slightly aged book then crossed out to form new poems. They look amazing within the composure of the book, and they're also very pleasant to read. The pages have yellowed in a greenish way, but are not yet brown. The digitally[?] placed sharpie helps it feel really straightforward and clean, which is a smart choice as physical erasures can be really difficult to read or understand the formatting of sometimes. The lines also aren't constrained to being traditionally done simply straight but really do tell a story when they aim as slashes or emotional crossing out's as opposed to only lines through and through. It's always so beautiful to see how poetry redone in someone else's hands can make it completely new and even more intriguing. It's very much her style to wed the concepts of a poetic essay, anti-capitalism, trans lesbianism, and old school sonnets into a combination presented like a journal. I don't know how she does it, but I do know that I hope she doesn't stop!

"she made herself a bed.  And slept in me."

Have I mentioned how much I love your use of the page? Like, your poems always have a very intentional shape and there's a precision for that I so admire.