Blackbird ArchiveCorey Van Landingham Reading Loop
Rebecca Poynor writes in her review of Corey Van Landingham’s most recent book of poems, Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens: “Van Landingham’s speaker joins art and history in their state of mechanical being—sentient and human but trapped within modern machinations and technology.” Van Landingham’s poem “The Marriage Plot” is featured in v21n2. Her first book, Antidote , won The Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry in 2012. Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens was published by Tupelo Press in 2022 and Van Landingham’s new book, Reader, I , is forthcoming from Sarabande Books in 2024.
Van Landingham’s work often confronts the violence and distance that often exists in aesthetics, as well as daily life. In “American Four Square,” she writes:
Sometimes even beauty needs a border.
Only in plowless tracts along the rail cut does the wild iris cast, still,
its explicit spell. Yes, we believed in this mythos. We lived between Church
and University, could almost imagine no one had died there.
Contemplative and engaged with an understanding of the way stories make their way into the speaker’s world, these poems often delve into questions of language and meaning that attend to the heart of what makes humanity what it is.
We invite you to enjoy her work in this issue and encourage you to read her other projects.
A poem tracing the history and mythology of the mail-order 'Prairie Box' house style and its place in American westward settlement.
PoetryBlood MoonA poem about a woman circling a library parking lot while a scam text preys on her, intercut with childhood memories of hunting with her father.
PoetryA Certain EpicharisA poem on Epicharis, a freedwoman conspirator against Nero known chiefly through Tacitus's account of her death.
PoetryThe End of the Life of Giorgione da Castelfranco, Venetian PainterA poem in the voice of a woman falling ill with plague while corresponding with a lover, evoking the death of painter Giorgione.
PoetryHypotacticA poem stringing together images of preserved time and buried history, from ancient seeds thawed from permafrost to Eden.
NonfictionReview by Rebecca Poynor | “Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens” by Corey Van LandinghamA review of Corey Van Landingham's poetry collection 'Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens,' which braids classical mythology with modern warfare and technology.
Features“A Correspondence with Corey Van Landingham”An interview with poet Corey Van Landingham about language, death, mythology, and artwork in her poems for this issue.