Shira Dentz

“SLIDE” by Shira Dentz

A new interview with Shira Dentz, author of SISYPHUSINA, as she elaborates on what poetry is and the intense collaborative process at work in her new book, available from [PANK] Books.

PANK: Your book opens with a letter to your readers about your formal
approach to these poems, including concerns like text weight, placement on the page, etc. One thing that jumped out to me was your note that “form is sculptural.” Do you approach your writing practice like visual art-making, with text standing in for a medium? continue reading here

I read from my new book, SISYPHUSINA (PANK Books), for National Poetry Month 2020, thanks to Tina Cane’s new virtual reading series!

is available now!

In the newly resurrected can we have our ball back?!!!!!!!!!
three poems:
“Gut the Lion,” “It makes there be some duende,” and “47 or 4 or 7”

& a collaborative poem with Adam Tedesco & Aimee Wright Claw, “Unsayable & Right Here”

CAN WE HAVE OUR BALL BACK?
the mother of all online poetry magazines

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One of the social functions of art is to document and respond to the human condition. In response to the global Covid-19 pandemic, The Nervous Breakdown presents three poems by three contemporary American poets.  One of the social functions of art is to document and respond to the human condition. In response to the global Covid-19 pandemic, The Nervous Breakdown presents three poems by three contemporary American poets: Shira Dentz, Aimee Claw, and Adam Tedesco

by KATHRYN COWLES

Some books of poems have to teach you how to read them because you can’t read them any of the old ways. Some books, in addition to being about whatever they’re about, are also about improvising a new way of saying, and therefore require a new way of reading. Some books are an investigation of methodology even as they plow ahead, and this is true of Shira Dentz’s how do i net thee (Salmon Press, 2018). So before I get into the specifics of Dentz’s original, weird methodology and language, I want to posit a theory of the why behind the how—the thinking I see going on behind the doing that manifests in the many luminous and strange visual elements in the book. But just to make sure you don’t lose interest amidst the theorizing process, here are some juicy bits of language, completely decontextualized, to hook you in, many of them employing this poet’s characteristically startling figurative language or her characteristically complicated alliterative twists and turns: continue reading here

Poetry in Performance at the College of Saint Rose

Students perform poems from Shira Dentz’s how do i net thee (Salmon Poetry, 2018). Listen here at SoundCloud

“Let the possum go,” a poem from THE SUN A BLAZING ZERO (Lavender Ink/Diálogos, 2019) featured at Verse Daily on Monday, 3/16/20. Read it here!