Though I had read the entire book, speaking each poem aloud, trying out the sound in various ways–I was blown away by Calvocoressi’s reading. Last fall, I had the pleasure of hearing Calvocoressi read this poem aloud. In the beginning of Rocket Fantastic, they explain that is pronounced as a sharp intake of breath. In this poem, and many like it from Rocket Fantastic, Calvocoressi swings between referring to the you as whose and. In it, other kids make fun of the speaker for being “stupid and not like them,” and this is the speaker’s response: “But I know how the grass sounds / when the locusts come, like a spaceship / taking off,” and, “I can feel how much // I want to shake and let myself go loose / and double like a cloud of mayflies on the lake.” The speaker’s perspective is so capacious and readily transformed in relation to the world around them that I am also called and invited into that shapeshifting doubleness. This poem, part of a series all addressed to the NASA captain Jim Novell, is pure magic. And isn’t the ghazal the perfect place to explore both intimacy and distance?Ĭaptain Lovell, There’s something so beautiful to me about a speaker pointing at a thing they plan to erase right after I’ve seen it. No sailor, no hushed ‘She never existed.’ Like open-mouthed girls who never existed.Īnd every street I ever walked down gone. What vowel filled the space the square once hugged

Striped ribcage of birds that never existed. Here is the house long since shuttered from view: This is what they said:įrom “Backdrop,” published in The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart We asked our editors to share their favorite Calvocoressi poem. She also runs the sports desk for the Best American Poetry Blog. She teaches at the MFA programs at California College of Arts in San Francisco and at Warren Wilson College. Her poem “Circus Fire, 1944” received The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Her awards and honors include a Stegner Fellowship, a Jones Lectureship at Stanford University, and a Rona Jaffe Women Writers’ Award. Her second collection, Apocalyptic Swing, was a finalist for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. This year, our Poetry Prize Judge is Gabrielle Calvocoressi, whose first book, The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award and won the 2006 Connecticut Book Award in Poetry. The winner will recieve $1000 and publication in the next edition of Indiana Review. Send up to three poems with $20 to enter and recieve a year-long subscription to Indiana Review. IR Editors Tell All: Favorite Gabrielle Calvocoressi Poemįrom February 1st to March 31st, Indiana Review is accepting submissions for the 2018 Poetry Prize.

Gabrielle calvocoressi rocket fantastic