I have lines from maybe my favorite Jack Spicer poem, “Psychoanalysis: An Elegy” (read it here, or even better, listen to a recording of Spicer reading it with a delirious momentum that’ll lodge in your head, too) constantly looping over my thoughts: “I would like to write a poem as long as California / And as slow as a summer. / Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow / As the very tip of summer. / As slow as the summer seems.”
This is it, this is where we are—the very tip of summer. I’m moving slow as I can. The light lessened slowly and now faster, and soon it’ll be the end of August, and with it, the next edition of Track Changes. Two stellar poets are joining us: Isaac Pickell—visiting from Detroit, with his brand new book—and Olivia Muenz!
✧ ✦ Tickets & More Info ✦ ✧
Olivia Muenz is the author of poetry collection I Feel Fine (Switchback Books, 2023), which won the 2022 Gatewood Prize, and chapbook Where Was I Again (Essay Press, 2022). Her work has appeared in New England Review, The Missouri Review, Poetry Daily, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, Conduit, Black Warrior Review, Pleaides, Massachusetts Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere.
Isaac Pickell is a Black and Jewish poet, PhD candidate, and adjunct instructor working in Detroit, Michigan. A Cave Canem Fellow, he is the author of The Smallest Mistake We Call Human (Black Lawrence Press, 2026), It’s not over once you figure it out (Black Ocean, 2023), and chapbooks from Black Lawrence Press and Dead Mall Press.
The July edition of Track Changes with Zach Blackwood and Gion Davis gave us new knowledge of subgenres including ‘cosmic country’ and ‘bootgaze’, dispatches from The Sphere in Las Vegas and the literal collapse of a porn theater, a poem called “The most punk thing you can’t remember”, and so much more. Check out the playlist:
♫ Track Changes 010: Zach Blackwood & Gion Davis ♫
Yours in stone fruit season,
♡ Alina