Carmen Giménez Smith

Be Recorder offers readers a blazing way forward into an as yet unmade world. The many times and tongues in these poems investigate the precariousness of personhood in lines that excoriate and sanctify. Carmen Giménez Smith turns the increasingly pressing urge to cry out into a dream of rebellion--against compromise, against inertia, against self-delusion, and against the ways the media dream up our complacency in an America that depends on it. This...

"One hundred poems. One hundred voices. One hundred points of view. . . . 'Please Excuse This Poem' features one hundred acclaimed younger poets from truly diverse backgrounds and points of view whose work has appeared everywhere from 'The New Yorker' to Twitter, tackling a startling range of subjects in a startling range of poetic forms. Dealing with the aftermath of war; unpacking the meaning of 'the rape joke'; sharing the tender moments at the...