In the tradition of Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Karen Volkman, and Lisa Jarnot, Jenny Grassl defamiliarizes language in poetry that is at once spontaneous and skillful, playful and erudite. Here, we encounter words that we only thought we knew, rendered suddenly strange as Grassl reimagines their semantic meaning. More specifically, the traditional signifiers of femininity – hems, lace, and crowns – are revealed as volatile and dangerous. Through her fearless experimentation and innovation, Grassl shows us the agency that we posses as we make our way through a language we did not choose, but instead chose us.
Jenny Grassl was raised in Pennsylvania, and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her poems appeared in The Boston Review as a runner-up prize selected by Mary Jo Bang. Rhino Poetry, Phantom Drift, Radar Poetry, and The Massachusetts Review have published her poems. Other journals include Ocean State Review, Rogue Agent, and Inverted Syntax. Her poetry is included in the anthologies BOSTON, the cities series of Dostoyevsky Wannabe Press, and Humanagerie, Eibonvale Press, UK. Her work was published in a National Poetry Month feature of Iowa Review. Lana Turner and Tupelo Quarterly will publish her poems in upcoming issues.
Read “Attend the Crowning Head” by Jenny Grassl >>
Read “Hem of Fire” by Jenny Grassl >>