In this seventh book in the Bagley Wright Lecture Series, Lisa Jarnot examines what it means to be a woman in a male-centered experimental tradition, to have white privilege, and live a life in poetry. Through these earnest, autobiographical essays, Jarnot investigates traditional and experimental forms of poetry and questions about the power of poetry to unite communities while acknowledging systemic racism and American exceptionalism. Jarnot considers poetry as a prophetic art and explores the writers that led her to her calling. “It seems to me that the inspiration behind poems is often a feeling that something is desperately wrong, or that something is desperately right, and out of one or the other of these emergencies, something must be said,” writes Jarnot.
