"Conversation" was the poem that made me get into her work.
Anything in her book *Vice* is sublime, but highlights for me include "The Journalist" and "The Cockfighter's Daughter"
autobiography of red is her most well known one, my favourite of hers though is h of h playbook
these are more verse novels than a traditional poetry collection, but all of her work is beautiful and often I find quite accessible
other authors I love are Mahmoud Darwish and Seamus Heaney
i think that jenny zhang is the first poet i read that made me go "ohhhhhhhh - i get it now." about poetry; i had always recognized the beauty of the language without understanding the stakes and naked human expression that language serves to meaningfully represent through it's beauty. some of my favorite works from her:
Poem: “Follow Him” By Jenny Zhang (buzzfeednews.com)
under the chiming bell by Jenny Zhang - Poems | Academy of American Poets
maybe it's because i read night sky with exit wounds very shortly after i got introduced to zhang's work but i always felt a sort of similarity between them, where vuong was concerned with reconciling the world they lived in and harmed them, zhang felt more concerned with keeping the score.
we got a movie discord we got a zine discord when's the poetry discord dropping...
definitely read book of longing if you haven’t already!
this whole series of poems is absolutely beautiful and obscene, that it’s hard to pick one.
so here’s one of my many favourites:
Poetically, this was going to be the last date before I delete Hinge and take a break for a few months.
Message received, loud and clear 🫡
On the bright side, I did get to see this bathroom with two stand mixers and a printer in it