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Michigan Quarterly Review
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Poems and Prose from the pages of the Michigan Quarterly Review

  1. 08/25/2025

    Summer 2025 | Marcela Sulak Reads Talismans

    A note about the work "Talismans" from Marcela Sulak for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Summer 2025 issue: I had been reading the poetry of Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber), the Syrian poet, and one day came upon a passionate and beautiful poem called "Talismans," which describes a yearning for love.  Its warmth and quotidian language, its organic materials, invited me to imagine married love in which the wife responds to the joys and challenges of living with her husband through the language of talismans.

    2 min

  2. 08/01/2025

    Summer 2025 | Leah Falk reads "There were no poets of motherhood"

    A note about the work "There were no poets of motherhood," from Leah Falk for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Summer 2025 issue: Motherhood has animated my poems since I became pregnant with my first daughter in 2019, but in this poem I return to a memory from before I had children, when motherhood was still an abstraction. After graduating from college, I worked in a bookstore near a prestigious university, and it was there that a well-known scholar and critic contended that there were “no poets of motherhood.” The claim seemed absurd to me even then, since I had been reading contemporary poets like Kim Addonizio, Rita Dove, Lucille Clifton, Rachel Zucker, and so many others who use their motherhood as a touchstone. My memory of her talk was among the first in which I realized that I could have an opinion that differed from someone so senior, and have evidence for it, too. In this poem I explore the imagined boundaries some might erect between scholarly and artistic pursuits and domestic and menial work, and what the cost of such borders might be to both art and labor.

    2 min

  3. 07/16/2025

    Summer 2025 | Deema Shehabi reads "Sun Theater Sonnet"

    A note about the work "Sun Theater Sonnets" (Stanzas 5-7) from Deema Shehabi for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Summer 2025 issue: I wrote this poem as an exploration of how daughters are perpetual placeholders for their mothers even after a mother’s death. This is manifested as inheriting the mother’s memories as one’s own, which can be enriching yet challenging due to the lack of differentiation that can occur. It took me years to understand my memories as distinct from hers. What remains, however, is nature’s solace as a backdrop for memories, both hers and, in turn, mine.

    2 min

  4. 06/18/2025

    Spring 2025 | Ezza Ahmed Reads "War is always silent until it's done"

    A note about the work “War is always silent until it's done” from Ezza Ahmed for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Spring 2025 Issue: Warsan Shire has a brilliant poem called “War Poem” and in the second stanza there’s imagery of war giving birth to another war. With that sentiment in mind, I was looking at the exit strategies from the stories of my loved ones and that’s how this poem began to take shape. I have a fascination with looking at the things they packed with them, items they thought they could not live without or wouldn’t find anywhere else. I wanted to see what items they treated as “ingredients” for a fresh start. Though, what I found most interesting was that in all the accounts that were shared with me, what you want to exit from always weasels its way in.

    1 min

  5. 06/12/2025

    Spring 2025 | Anni Liu Reads "Foreshadow Work"

    A note about the work "Foreshadow Work" from Anni Liu for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Spring 2025 issue: I was finally able to access effective therapy last year, and that has meant engaging in “shadow work,” or integrating the parts of the self that have been hidden or rejected. I realized poetry has always been a site of shadow work for me, foreshadowing the work I would do in therapy, especially around the alienation of having been an alien. Some of the language in the poem is borrowed from therapy, and some of it is punny and playful, which is maybe an homage to Harryette Mullen and especially her incredible book Sleeping with the Dictionary. I was also happily surprised to arrive at the aspirational ending that remixes the famous line attributed to Terence.

    1 min

  6. 06/05/2025

    Spring 2025 | Sanjana Bijlani Reads "It's safe to say"

    A note about the work "It's safe to say" from Sanjana Bijlani for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Spring 2025 issue: I wrote the first draft of this poem in the morning, a time when Ifeel most able to connect with the dreamscape of sleep, thewistfulness I feel at not being able to stay within it as the day'sroutines await. I think I began the poem to try and find language for the experience of missing my beloveds in all their complexity and carrying their histories with me even as each day tasks me to survive its obligations and aggressions. At the heart of the poem is a deep wish, a longing for so much more for us.

    4 min

  7. 03/18/2025

    Winter 2025 | Laurie Blauner Reads "The Florist"

    A note about the work “The Florist” from Laurie Blauner for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Winter 2025 Issue: This is a longer poem than I had previously written. It’s part of a new poetry manuscript and ends the section titled “An Occupation” which includes many different jobs. I had noticed several florist shops in Seattle and imagined working in one. When I wrote the poem it just kept continuing, encompassing more and more.

    3 min

  8. 03/07/2025

    Winter 2025 | Amy Benson Reads "Ditch and Drain, Fill and Build"

    A note about the work “Ditch and Drain, Fill and Build” from Amy Benson for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Winter 2025 Issue: I’ve been working on a manuscript about rising seas and the myths about floods that have been told in the past, are being told now, and might be told in the future. I got interested in the relationship between land and water and realized that I knew very little about the “ground” I was standing on in Manhattan, my home for fifteen years. I started researching the history of the land and how it has hardened and expanded over the centuries, and how the fresh water has been drained off, poisoned, and exiled to sewage pipes below ground. Following the water reveals the colonial and capitalist transformation of the island: what starts with foot long oysters in the pre-contact waters around Mannahatta ends with minuscule oysters trying to attach to new human-made reefs in New York Harbor made of waste metal and oyster shells salvaged from restaurants.

    11 min
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About

Poems and Prose from the pages of the Michigan Quarterly Review

Information

  • Creator
    Michigan Quarterly Review
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2025
  • Episodes
    139
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Michigan Quarterly Review
  • Show Website
    MQR Sound