I’m not interested in poems that simply narrate or enact a performance of a life while the reader watches. It’s important that the work feel distilled and transformed. Poems that are elliptical or take a sidelong approach are more compelling, and feel more accurately aligned with lived experience, too (the truth told “slant” feels more true).

In an interview with Adam Fitzgerald at Lit Hub, poet Deborah Landau discusses her latest collection of poems, “linguistic wildness,” and “the disquieting experience of inhabiting a female body.” Fitzgerald’s questions and Landau’s answers are equally poetic, elegant, and revealing.