Contributions
- Three Poems by Alexandra Burack
Read three poems by Alexandra Burack, our third biweekly poet of the Fall 2025 issue, along with a few words about “To Know Blue From the Color of Snow at Dusk.”
About the Contributor
Alexandra Burack, author of On the Verge, is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and freelance editor/writing coach. Her recent work appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Pangyrus, Metphrastics, ucity review, and The Sewanee Review, among other venues, and is forthcoming in Packingtown Review, Trampoline, and Thimble Lit Mag. She serves as a Poetry Editor for Iron Oak Editions and Poetry is Currency, and a Poetry Reader for The Los Angeles Review, The Adroit Journal, and West Trade Review/Trill. Her website is alexandraburack.com.
Author Website
Recent Links
- Poem: “Garage Painting” (The Ekphrastic Review)
- Poem: “Scrapbook Deckle-Edged Photo” (Pangyrus)
- Poem: “Art Song” (Metphastics)
- Two Poems by Alexandra Burack (DUMBO Press)
- Poem: “Cafeteria Décor” (The Ekphrastic Review)
Contributor Q & A
What do you want readers to know about you?
I am a queer woman (she/her) poet over 60 who has been reading, writing, studying, teaching, publishing, editing, and promoting poetry for my entire adult life. I’ve taught creative writing, literature, and composition in public and private colleges and universities, community centers, adult education institutes, creative youth programs, senior centers, and literary arts organizations. Most recently, I served as Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at Chandler-Gilbert Community College (AZ) for 11 years until my position and courses were eliminated in April of 2025. I’m the founder of Ekphrastica, a collaborative workshop between creative writers and visual/performing artists, and the inventor of The Question Tree, a critical thinking-based pedagogy for the practice of English Composition. In addition to earning an Honors B.A. in Sociology/Women’s Studies and an MFA in Writing, I am a former social worker, patient advocate, and PhD student in Medical Sociology. I work currently as an independent editor, writing coach, manuscript assessor, and tutor, and offer writing consultancy services in all genres of creative writing, as well as scholarly writing and grant-writing.
How long have you been a writer and how did you get started?
My father, Boris, a writer, editor, and college English professor, read the poetry of Walt Whitman, E.E. Cummings, and Emily Dickinson out loud to me nightly from my infancy. Listening to the musical cadences of language just enthralled me, even as a toddler. I knew written language, especially poetry, was my central life energy from the time I was 4 years old, when I spoke a poem to my dad, and he rushed to type it out on his manual Royal typewriter. Two years later, he founded a children’s newsletter and published my first attempt at a real poem; this meant the world to me at the time, even though looking back on it, I doubt any critic would think the piece signaled a gift for writing. My father’s encouragement to write—and simultaneously, to be a dedicated reader—sustained me after his sudden death at the hands of a drunk driver when I was 8. It feels as if I’ve always been writing poetry—or hearing poetry in my head—but it took me until my mid-30s to begin to write the kind of poetry I found myself most enchanted by in my reading of others’ work. The most important professional break—not in the sense of being paid for my poems, but the moment I realized I wasn’t fooling myself by identifying as a poet—occurred in late 1994, when I had the immense honor to work on my poems with the irreplaceable poet Jack Gilbert, who was a close friend of two CT poets I’d invited to join the collective I founded, Brick Walk Poets. The moment Jack Gilbert deeply praised a poem I’d been working on for months, and encouraged me to publish it, was the moment I knew life made sense only in my continued efforts to honor the art and craft of poetry.
What’s an accomplishment in your writing life of which you’re proud and what do you still hope to achieve?
The accomplishment that stands out as both wholly unexpected and utterly life-changing was the selection by the stellar poet, Richie Hofmann, of my poem “Demarcation” as Runner-Up in the Fifth Annual Sewanee Poetry Competition in 2022, and having the poem published in The Sewanee Review in 2023. Although I’m grateful that my chapbook, On the Verge, was published in 1997 by Plinth Books, I am exceptionally determined to see my first full-length poetry manuscript, Demarcation, published by a third-party publisher before my late 60s (perhaps this is more a dream than a goal, seeing that the ms. has been rejected by over 135 venues so far—but poets can be dreamers as well as philosophers). And I hope I will have enough time to experiment in all the poetic forms that fascinate me, to expand my palette of images, and to grow literary bravery enough to take risks to imagine, invent, reframe, and re-envision.
Who are your favorite writers?
I could write pages in response to this question! To be succinct: my favorite 20th century poets are: E.E. Cummings, Jack Gilbert, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Stanley Kunitz, Randall Jarrell, Weldon Kees, Sylvia Plath, James Wright, Philip Larkin, Adrienne Rich, Richard Hugo, Denis Johnson, and Wislawa Szymborska. Among my favorite 21st century poets are: Richie Hofmann, Rick Barot, A.E. Stallings, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Diane Seuss, Richard Siken, Vijay Seshadri, Mario Petrucci, Carolyn Forché, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Henri Cole, and Li-Young Lee. I’d strongly urge any creative writer, and especially poets, to read the important 20th century literary critics: Northrop Frye, George Steiner, bell hooks, Randall Jarrell, Cleanth Brooks, Helen Vendler, and Adrienne Rich are the most important among them. I am most compelled by poetry that makes the attempt to find fresh metaphors and similes, uses vibrant and unexpected diction, and celebrates the musical qualities of language in concert with sense meaning.
Contents
Chapbook Poem: When I Was Straight by Dustin Brookshire
“‘When I Was Straight’ prompted me to think about a common queer experience—how most parents assume their children are ‘straight’ and expect their children to live a ‘straight’ life.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for October 2025 along with words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: American Girl: Fort Hood, 2023 by Thea Matthews
“[W]eaving in and juxtaposing the lyrics of Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl.’ The song’s themes of desperation, wanderlust, and longing are subverted by Ana’s life and tragedy at Fort Cavazos, previously known as Fort Hood, Texas.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem for October 2025 along with words from the poet.
“It seems such a shame that a beautiful location is just gathering dust and overgrowth, and I wanted to lean into the juxtaposition of that.” Read three poems by Bryana Fern along with a few words about “Women on the Wall.”
Bodies in Transition: Sacred & Perishable by Carissa Natalia Baconguis
“There is a muscular intimacy to the ecosystem of these poems, each one of them creating as vivid a world individually as exists in the collection as a whole.” Read Gray Davidson Carroll’s full review.
“In ‘No Breaks’ I was writing about something I hope I never have to experience. … I tried to keep despair at bay and show some defiance and resilience.” Read two poems by Gerald Yelle along with a few words about “No Breaks.”
November ’25: New Staff, Issue Archive & Donations
Read a note from Editor Aiden Hunt about our new Poetry Readers, the additions of an Issue Archive and a Contributor Fund, Fall poetry submissions, and Gaza.
Chapbook Poem: Two egrets at the edge of a tidal marsh by Rebekah Wolman
“Settling on the mirror form opened the way into the parallels between the original image of the egrets, their reflection, and their ambiguous relationship and the shifting, even reversing, roles of an adult daughter and her aging mother…” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for November 2025 along with words from the poet.
Three Poems by Alexandra Burack
“Subsequent drafts enabled me to … uncover the metaphor of exile, whose meanings are intended to move readers from an experience of alienation to one of discernment of the liberating qualities of outsiderhood.” Read three poems by Alexandra Burack, along with a few words about “To Know Blue From the Color of Snow at Dusk.”
Book Excerpt: Rondo by Yamini Pathak
“The sculpture gardens are located on … the native land of the Lenape people. The poem is a conversation between sculpture, land, and its human and more-than-human inhabitants.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for November 2025, “Rondo” from Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps by Yamini Pathak, along with a few words from the poet.
Two Poems by Yasmin Mariam Kloth
“As I shaped the poem, the olive trees became a witness to a deeper experience—to a region’s ongoing, collective pain. It was the land I wanted to make speak in a place where I did not have words.” Read two poems by Yasmin Mariam Kloth, along with a few words about “Before.”
A Conversation with Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes
“We wanted something that was alive, highlighted an ever-expanding list of books by these poets, and that will hopefully survive the both of us and flourish under the curation of a fresh set of poets.” Read the full interview about the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook series.
Chapbook Poem: Red Tide by Mary Gilliland
“Reflection, research, a public service announcement, an old Zen koan, and 3 weeks of bicycling for groceries with a bandana tied around my nose and mouth inform ‘Red Tide’.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for December 2025, “Red Tide” from Red Tide at Sandy Bend, along with a few words from the poet.
Three Poems by Veronica Tucker
“’You Left the Fridge Open Again’ transforms an ordinary domestic moment into a meditation on tenderness and decay. The open refrigerator becomes a quiet altar, its hum a hymn to what lingers after love’s warmth has cooled.” Read three poems by Veronica Tucker, along with a few words about “You Left the Fridge Open Again.”
Book Excerpt: The Samadhi of Words by Richard Collins
“Zen poets, past and present, who experience deep absorption in the grandeur of this world may even gain wisdom through the way of poetry, Shidō (詩道). This is the samadhi of words.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for December 2025, “The Samadhi of Words” from Stone Nest by Richard Collins, along with a few words from the poet.
December ’25: Pushcart Prize Nominations
Editor Aiden Hunt announces Philly Chapbook Review’s 2026 Pushcart Prize anthology nominations in this editor’s note and provides links to, and a carousel of, the nominated poems.