Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s new collection of poetry, The New Economy, was a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award in Poetry. Other collections include The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, Apocalyptic Swing, and Rocket Fantastic, which is the winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. They serve on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets and live in Old East Durham, NC, where joy, compassion, and social justice are at the center of their personal and poetic practice.
Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush
I hear the level Bee—
A Jar across the Flowers goes
Their Velvet Masonry
Withstands until the sweet Assault
Their Chivalry consumes—
While He, victorious tilts away
To vanquish other Blooms.
And
His Feet are shod with Gauze—
His Helmet, is of Gold,
His Breast, a Single Onyx
With Chrysophrase, inlaid.
His Labor is a Chant—
His Idleness—a Tune—
Oh, for a Bee’s experience
Of Clovers, and of Noon!
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(Lentan Cistern 43)
Every Day but Sunday
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Formless as a cloud building or
Dispersed as on April’s pollen eyes
Blooming Open open shaking
side to side As is there want. My
head Lolls back and forth on the stem
From my shoulders Justin comes through
the side gate fields of him if I
take my glasses off he’s everywhere
look we’re trumpet and corona
one body and box full of bees
where he’s headed the smoke from the
smoker that covers us both wax
some pine needles whatever he
has around it makes us smell like
church I say lulled leave my glasses
off I’m all petals and nectar
we’re one hum one gold breeze into
the colony that eases heals
kills reforms itself around us
I inhale lean into golden
musk of us assembled what if
this was all my body my stem
my bulb my roots my endlessness.
People, places, and ideas mentioned:
(The trains did, in fact, come to Amherst in 1853 as I stated in the interview. To read more about the railroad and Edward’s role in bringing them to town, you can try this link. And this one.)
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem,“God’s Grandeur” ties in Gaby’s reference to him talking about feet being “shod”
Eliza Richards, Dickinson scholar
Jen Bervin and her extraordinary work
Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University
Kate Bowler (and she has a podcast!)
Nystagmus (visual disability)
Mary Oliver (and her poem, “Wild Geese”)
The Regulator Bookshop, Durham, North Carolina
Modern Nature: The Journals of Derek Jarman
Lucille Clifton, The Clifton House in Baltimore
Homer’s The Iliad – I got it wrong and led Gaby astray, that new translation is in fact done by Emily Wilson (not Alice Oswald). However, you can watch Alice Oswald interview Emily Wilson about it here.
Other Dickinson poems mentioned:
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
Recorded March 26, 2026.
There’s still some room for the reading, conversation, & Q&A with Kelli Russell Agodon!
An upcoming stand-alone workshop that might be of interest:
