This collection won the MAYDAY 2022 Micro-Chapbook Poetry contest.
Read our interview with the author here.
“In This Body I Have Tried to Write, Ja’net Danielo expertly weaves together malignant tumors (‘sharp-edged stones’), the James Webb Space Telescope, 90210, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the etymology of the language of physical suffering to produce a collection that references not only the singular body of the speaker but also the very web of genetics and human connection. Danielo’s poems grapple with tension of the body as a force of danger and desire: ‘Who among us hasn’t wanted / to kill the sweetest thing?’ An impressive demonstration of craft and music, ‘We are only rust-gold / & bright for so long…And we’re / so tired of sucking the sap, bark-/ parched lips making do with / sugar scraps,’ we are asked to consider the body as burden, as machine, and as the ‘construction of time.’ These poems are a collective meditation on the pervasive nature of illness, how it spreads not only within one body but among them, and how the world will not soften for our grieving—neither for the living nor the dead. This Body I Have Tried to Write compels readers to wrestle with what it means to be wholly alive and woefully fragile.”
– MAYDAY Poetry Editors
JA’NET DANIELO is the author of The Song of Our Disappearing, a winner of the Paper Nautilus 2020 Debut Series Chapbook Contest. A recipient of a Professional Artist Fellowship from Arts Council for Long Beach and the Telluride Institute’s Fischer Prize, her poems have appeared in Superstition Review, The Shore, GASHER, Mid-American Review, Radar Poetry, Gulf Stream, and elsewhere. Originally from Queens, NY, Ja’net teaches at Cerritos College and lives in Long Beach, CA, where she facilitates Word Women, a free, virtual poetry workshop and retreat series for women and gender nonbinary writers. You can find her at jdanielo.com
Cover design by TRINH MAI, a California-based visual artist who examines the refugee and immigrant experience, then and now. Her work pursues healing through storytelling by confronting the fear, injustice, and devastation that has harrowed our communities. Seeking hope within humanity’s consistent struggle in war and hardship, she has engaged survivors of war in creative projects through partnerships with academic and arts institutions, including Friends of Huế Foundation Children’s Shelter in Việt Nam, the Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia, and the International Rescue Committee. Mai is the recipient of awards from Gonzaga University’s Center for Global Engagement, and has had the privilege of serving as University of Washington Walker-Ames Fellow in 2019, Long Beach Professional Artist Fellow in 2021, and continues speaking about her art practice and engaging communities in creative storytelling, with the desire to help usher us into an enduring hope that will help ground us in a fractured world. Learn more about her work at trinhmai.com.
