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In this Poets House event, Garrett Hongo reads from his fourth poetry collection, Ocean of Clouds (Knopf, 2025), and Edward Hirsch reads from his new memoir, My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy (Knopf, 2025), followed by a conversation between the authors about their friendship and humor.
“If the dandelion on the sidewalk is / mere detail, the dandelion inked on a friend’s bicep / is an image because it moves when her body does,” writes Rick Barot in his poem “The Wooden Overcoat,” published in Poetry magazine in 2012. The speaker of the poem draws a distinction between a “detail” and an “image” defining the latter as something connected to a larger context and personal history that is “activated in the reader’s senses beyond mere fact.” Compose a poem that experiments with this distinction, perhaps incorporating both a “detail” and an “image” so that each functions in an intentional way. You could consider beginning with an item and slowly shifting the reader’s understanding of its significance as the poem progresses. Look to Barot’s poem for inspiration on form and use of space.
Marissa Davis reads from her debut poetry collection, End of Empire (Penguin Books, 2025), in this Books Are Magic event with poets Sasha Burshteyn and A. D. Lauren-Abunassar. Davis’s book is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
