#TPQ5: RACHEL KASS

Diving Into The Wreck By Adrienne Rich

Adrienne and I operate on a first-name basis – or at least on my end. She reminds me that I’m a badass when I cry and that confronting my shadow self is necessary to claim the space I take up.

Works of Love snd Terror By Donna de la Perrière

Donna propels me into a maze of lyrical imagery with a clarity of truth that grounds me in her sweeping narratives. Her voice is an undercurrent of magic that continuously runs “…beneath what is visible, a calculable surface…”

The Body Ghost By Joseph Lease

Upon reading any of Joseph’s work, I feel a sense of freedom in facing the incantations of a world that profits from self-hate. He’s a surrealist that carries the dimensions of being in each line break, each blank space – a totality gathered carefully in song.

Clouded Sky by Miklós Radnóti

Radnóti continued to write until his dying breath – his wife found Clouded Sky in his pocket, in a mass grave, just after the holocaust. This book is, for, simply indescribable, so I will let him speak: “A rustling tepid silence holds / me fast, as in that time before my birth.”

The Collected Poems: Robert Creeley

Each of Robery Creeley’s poems carry melodies that accumulate bit by bit, like an hourglass. His poems sound like jazz of the mind – a conversation with the self, without a need for answers.


Rachel Kass is a weirdo living in New England with her two minions – I mean cats. Her book is Jewess in a Forest and Other Poems, out now from Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Rachel’s work has appeared in Bomb magazine, Hotel, Maudlin House and more. Say hello @rhamphoid on twitter and Instagram.

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