Poetry is a gift of meaning to readers, wrapped up in words and lyrical verse that can provoke emotion, change opinions and give voice to unspoken feelings. Northern Virginians don’t have to look far to find great poets nearby. Here, we share the details of three recently released poetry books, all written by DMV authors.
Beautiful & Full of Monsters
Author: Courtney LeBlanc
Released: March 2020
Lives in: Arlington
What to Expect: Written in three sections, Beautiful & Full of Monsters unwraps the pain and beauty of romance, focusing on the best and worst of relationships. “It’s told backwards,” says LeBlanc. “The first section is ‘Monsters,’ the second section is ‘Full,’ and the third section is ‘Beautiful.’ It has a subtle arc to it that starts with an unhealthy relationship and then moves into a healthy relationship. It’s about finding a balance in life with relationships.”
NoVA Connections: “No matter what, because this is where I live and because NoVA is my home, [the area is] reflected in my poems,” LeBlanc says. Though her recent book of poems doesn’t explicitly call out any of the region’s cities, she says, “I wrote a little bit about living in an urban area, and some of my other poems, while not in this collection, definitely reflect that we’re right here by DC, with politics always close to us. That finds its way into a lot of my writing.”
Warbler
Author: Jane Schapiro
Released: September 2020
Lives in:Annandale
What to Expect:Many of the poems in Schapiro’s new collection, Warbler, focus on journeying through grief. “A warbler is a songbird,” Schapiro says. “The book itself is dedicated to the memory of a young Israeli woman, Shiri, which means song [in Hebrew]. The first section is a series of poems that deal with loss. Shiri came to work in the Northern Virginia community for two years about 10 years ago and became a close member of our family. In 2015, she died of breast cancer at 31, so the poetry is about my own particular process of dealing with this loss. Grief is a very singular experience. I had my own need to find words for the grief because it often resists language.”
NoVA Connections:Schapiro received her MFA from George Mason University and says, “My poetry really took off in Northern Virginia because of the seriousness and support and encouragement I received at George Mason.”
By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of Our Nation’s Capital
Author: Kim Roberts
Released: October 2020
Lives in: Washington, DC
What to Expect: By Broad Potomac’s Shore is an anthology of 132 poets who were active in Washington, DC from the city’s founding to about 1930, with a focus on women and minority poets, as well as writers’ work that may have been lost to time. “I stopped in 1930 because that’s the beginning of literary modernism, and the literature really changes,” Roberts says. “Before that point, poetry would have been much more of a regular part of most people’s lives than it is after modernism, including today. It was reprinted in newspapers, set to music; people recited it at community events; it was memorized in schools. It was a popular form for addressing a wide range of issues, from patriotism to love of nature and love of family to some pretty radical ideas at the time, like abolition and women’s rights. You see all of that in the work of the DC poets I have resurrected for this anthology.”
NoVA Connections: Roberts’ ties to NoVA run deep; she worked for nine years for Arlington County Cultural Affairs as the director of literary programs. Most recently, she helped Arlington to develop guidelines to begin its poet laureate program and served as a juror for the program’s second laureate. Readers will also discover NoVA poets in the anthology because “DC originally included Northern Virginia,” Roberts says. “When I talk about the early eras of DC, I am including what are today Arlington and Alexandria.”
This story originally appeared in our November print issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to our monthly magazine.
