Emily Rosko is a rising star in contemporary poetry. She has a gift for bridging the vast expanse that is often imagined between literature and philosophy. Like the great modernist poets who came before her, particularly Mina Loy, H.D., Gertrude Stein, and Marianne Moore, Rosko proves that form and technique can be used to revise, and reclaim agency over, what is in essence a predominantly masculine intellectual tradition. Here, we offered sentences that are grammatically faultless, but within them, we find a provocative fragmentation of logic. Any preconceived ideas we have about reason, rationality, and sense-making are challenged with lyricism and grace. As each poem unfolds, Rosko brings this experimentation to bear on questions of grief, bereavement, and melancholia in language as subtle as it is nuanced.
Emily Rosko’s poetry collections include: Weather Inventions and Prop Rockery, both from the University of Akron Press, and Raw Goods Inventory from the University of Iowa Press. New poems have appeared recently in The Denver Quarterly, The Mississippi Review, and The Shore. She is Associate Professor at the College of Charleston and Director of the MFA Creative Writing Program. She is the Poetry Editor of Crazyhorse.
Read “When You Say You Wish You Were Dead” by Emily Rosko >>
Read “Course & Ripple” by Emily Rosko >>
Read “The Marks” by Emily Rosko >>