MAYA C. POPA
Photograph by Bill Wadman
Maya C. Popa is the author of Wound is the Origin of Wonder (Norton) and American Faith (Sarabande). Her newsletter, Poetry Today, is one of Substack’s bestselling literature publications. The poetry reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she teaches at NYU and runs Conscious Writers Collective, a year-round online literary platform and community for dedicated writers.
I have wanted all the world, its beauties
and its injuries; some days,
I think that is punishment enough.
Poetry offers a space that temporarily clarifies, illuminates, and enacts ambivalences and experiences that are beyond language. But the most exciting part is the attempt and hope that you might truly capture a feeling or sensibility and “deliver it alive” on the page, as Pound says. It’s the effort and process of writing that offers so much meaning, and that itself clarifies the questions that drive us to the page in the first place.
July 28, 2024