WORD BY WORD
Fifteen years ago we published our first look at debut poets in an effort to brighten the spotlight on emerging poets. Every year since then we have featured ten to eighteen poets who have recently published their debut books—172 poets in total—and given them the space to offer advice and talk about how they wrote their books “word by word, line by line, poem by poem,” as Tyehimba Jess said in our first debut poets roundup, in 2005. Here are some highlights:
ON GETTING UNSTUCK
“When my own work is not coming along, I try to stop and recognize the people doing the same challenging, at times unforgiving, art—and I feel happy. I think it’s hard, in our day and age, not to think, ‘It’s me against the world,’ (2017), whose debut, , was published by Copper Canyon Press. In 2019 he published his first novel, (Penguin Press), and received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
