Ariana Benson // the Word Hashira ⚔️✍🏾

LOVE this cover!

They sit up here and play “Good Tweet, Bad Tweet” like Kendall Roy, only without the sliver of self-awareness that made that character watchable

“we don’t pay her to put on no fkin fashion show, we pay her to nan!” 😭

alina stefanescu, writer

Scraping my brain from the floor to admit that I'm on deadline this week so I won't be here much, but My Heresies is coming out at the end of April and here is more on that note, and thank you, friends, for reading. Always. Cue "Epitaph for My Heart". 🫶

www.alinastefanescuwriter.com/my-heresies

upfromsumdirt
ABSTRACK AFRICANA

haydens ferry review issue 71.
haydensferryreview.com/upfromsumdir...

Art, Liberty, Diverse Voices: Six Poets on Why University Presses Are Critical for Poetry For anyone who pays attention to major literary awards, it will come as no surprise that university presses figure prominently among celebrated and vigorous publishers of contemporary poetry. In th…

"I think it’s important to publish scholarship alongside poetry & to keep the two in figurative conversation in our collective consciousness, as well as physical proximity on the shelves of bookshops," @arianab.bsky.social writes @LiteraryHub https://bit.ly/42oN1OH this week....

Art, Liberty, Diverse Voices: Six Poets on Why University Presses Are Critical for Poetry For anyone who pays attention to major literary awards, it will come as no surprise that university presses figure prominently among celebrated and vigorous publishers of contemporary poetry. In th…

University presses have a finger on the pulse of contemporary poetry. In fact, poetry publishing play an important role in university presses’ mission to cultivate human knowledge.

6 poets discuss their work w/ university presses @literaryhub.bsky.social.
https://bit.ly/42oN1OH #PoetryMonth

And the great irony is they all have money, and none of them know how to be happy. They haven't figured out that money has a very limited ability to bring happiness. And above a certain amount, you get diminishing returns. Our relationships with the people we love is the true recipe for happiness.

This. Their problem is that we have the nerve to be “broke” and still find a way to experience delight. “Broke” and still connected to others and the world through what we make.

They can’t fathom anyone could be happy without money being the driving force of that happiness.

This explains it so succinctly—yes! It’s really just hateration doused in capitalist lack of imagination.

The looks nosy flight neighbors give when I say I’m a poet, and yes I actually do get paid for poems in big 2025… you can see them doing mental math tryna figure out how I bought my ticket 😂

Pet theory time!

Creativity is the Riddler to Casino Capitalism’s techno-fascist Batman. (I’ve been reading to kids a lot lately!)

A lot of the hate for writers, writing, etc is two things:

1. Alienation — they cannot do it & have never understood it.

2. Capital cannot fully capture creativity

I’m really starting wonder how much of the excitement I see from AI proponents at the idea that it will “take [writer’s] jobs” can be attributed to their resentment and unhappiness with their own careers?

It reads like “ha, soon you’ll have to work a job you hate, too!” …very weird.

Kiddo What was it that slid through the field of my hand? A mountain. I will say it was a mountain, although it is no longer here for any other to see. It is elsewhere and doubtless sitting like a toad whose voraciousness desires to be appeased. At a key moment any hand may grow warm and as sustaining as a grove of pawpaw or sassafras trees. I will negotiate moving forward from here, forward into the thickness that buries all but the most willful homing. The seat is leather-like and brown and the back is mint green. What kind of sense does that make? Who knows? But at least people needing to sit have somewhere to do that. There are always turns as entirely unexpected as this. Often a bright pair of shoelaces appears as if out of nowhere.

This poem, first published in Gulf Coast and then in The American Sonnet: An Anthology of Poems and Essays, is included in my collection, The Importance of Being Feeble-Minded, due out next month

🙏🏾☺️

As a Writer! at least 235 of my 500+ open tabs are **critical research materials**

That “Final 4 Escaped Lab Monkeys Stick Together As They Avoid Traps In South Carolina” story is gonna make a helluva poetic metaphor… whenever I get around to writing it.

It’s been on my list for a while, this just reminded me to tap in

Congratulations, Torrin!! Love to see you winning 💐💐

sharing again because it some new folks have followed—take this essay as an experimental bio/introduction of sorts ☺️😂

wrote a piece that theorizes why/how Black people got/are into anime 👩🏾‍🎤

imo, Saturday morning Toonami + Representation (not in traditional “protag looks like me” sense, but in the structure of the story/world) = Black fandom!

some excerpts here, full story linked:

kenyonreview.org/piece/sho-ga...

I can’t thank you enough, Laura, for bringing my work into this space, in this way. It’s truly a poet’s dream, to have their writing critically engaged with. You’re a rock star! ✨

Presented on @arianab.bsky.social's Black Pastoral on a MELUS-sponsored panel at #MLA25 yesterday - and (rightfully) many folks afterward expressed enthusiastic interest in the book and in taking up, reading, even teaching Benson's work! I love helping to bring amazing new poetry to wider audiences.

Paige Bueckers is a DAWG

George Forman’s sons, all named George, to release an autoGeorgeography entitled “On Earth We Are Briefly Georges” in 2025 from Panini Press

So, book news: Roxane Gay picked RESTING BITCH FACE for the Audacious Book Club!!! 😭 The first piece of news I get for my forthcoming book has completely knocked me over, and galleys aren’t even in. I am so grateful, I cannot even begin to tell you guys. I can’t wait to share the book with y’all.

That “Don’t make gingerbread people live in a house made of themselves” commercial just triggered the most violent existential crisis 😟 like why do we do that?? it’s sick??

That a woman not ask a man to leave meaningful work to follow her. That a man not ask a woman to leave meaningful work to follow him. That no one try to put Eros in bondage. But that no one put a cudgel in the hands of Eros. That our loyalty to one another and our loyalty to our work not be set in false conflict. That our love for each other give us love for each other’s work. That our love for each other’s work give us love for one another. That our love for each other’s work give us love for one another That our love for each other give us love for each other’s work. That our love for each other, if need be, give way to absence. And the unknown. That we endure absence, if need be, without losing our love for each other. Without closing our doors to the unknown.

I have this poem taped up on my kitchen cabinet, and once in a while it just grabs me by the face, lovingly.

Denise Levertov, “Prayer for Revolutionary Love”: