WORD BY WORD
REFLECTING ON FIFTEEN YEARS OF DEBUT POETS
Reflecting on fifteen years of debut poets.
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,’ or, ‘I have to do this for my career because everyone else is hammering away and if I stop now, I will fall behind and be forgotten.’ But that’s a toxic and self-defeating gaze. I think we are more productive—even in stillness—when we can recognize one another, when we say to each other, ‘Thank you for doing this with me. Thank you for carrying on when I cannot.’” —Ocean Vuong
(2017), whose debut, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, was published by Copper Canyon Press. In 2019 he published his first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press), and received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
“When I was at Harvard, Jamaica Kincaid once said in our workshop, ‘Write about that which most embarrasses you.’ I think that’s profoundly good advice. It’s so easy, isn’t it, to climb atop a soapbox and recite a poem about the ways in which we believe the world is fucked up? When I write that way, I’m certain all I’m doing is insulting my reader. Who, for example, doesn’t know the whole world is in cinders? And so I believe my work can be more effective, can reach deeper inside the reader, if I say, ‘It is I who feel profoundly fucked up,’ and then explore why meticulously. I like to use tenderness as a weapon, a seduction, a door to leave ajar so that my reader will walk inside the poem and feel safe, even in the face of profound historical horror.” —Robin Coste
Lewis (2016), whose debut, Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems (Knopf), won the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry.
ON COMMUNITY
“Humility and a desire for excellence are really important traits in a poet—not insecurity, but humility. Read a lot of poetry, and support fellow poets by buying books. Finally, try to remain positive about yourself, and be positive toward other poets. It’s so easy in this environment to think that everything related to poetry is a big conspiracy. True, some aspects of the poetry world can be sketchy, but there are still a lot of people in poetry who have integrity and believe in the integrity of the work. One can waste a lot of energy focusing on all the wrong things.” —Victoria Chang (2005), who spent ten years writing her debut, Circle, and submitted it to more than thirty contests before it was accepted by Southern Illinois University Press. Chang is now the author of five poetry collections, including Obit, forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2020.
“Read five poems for every one poem that you write. You have to understand the broader landscape and community in which your work exists.” —Saeed
Jones (2015), who, five years after publishing his debut poetry collection, Prelude to Bruise, with Coffee House Press, released his memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives (Simon & Schuster), which won the 2019 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction.
“Be kind to yourself and to other poets. There are so many people in the world who would conspire against our joy, who would mistake our reverent wonder for idleness. Against everything, we have to protect our permeability to wonder. That’s the nucleus around which all interesting art orbits.”
—Kaveh Akbar (2018), whose debut, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, was published by Alice James Books.