Invested in the lyric and its troubled relationship to the social, Sol Cabrini and Juliana Spahr‘s poems emerge from the tense proximity between moments of lyrical devotion and scenes of everyday violence (“the grain of grass / the motor’s hum / the moon’s denial / each sunbeam a demonstration of complicity,” Cabrini). To be attuned to “nature”—even possibly enchanted by it—isn’t a retreat into escapism but its opposite: an intensification of what is here and exists. It’s easy to give up on poetry when the world is on fire; harder to insist that we need it precisely because of that reason.

Guest introduction by Ethan Philbrick

This event will also be livestreamed for free on the Project’s YouTube channel.