Chosen Companions of the Goblin
Open Country Press, 2019
Winner of the Open Country Press Chapbook Competition, selected by Heather Cahoon
Drawing on the lives of the Fox Sisters, whose work spurred the American Spiritualism Movement of the late 19th century, Chosen Companions of the Goblin “echo(es) the era of revivalist evangelical movements and the fracturing of the Protestant moral landscape into new denominations and ways of believing,” says contest judge Heather Cahoon. Using documentary poetics, erasure, list poems, and persona, the poems reflect on “the real and metaphorical silencing of women” as they explore a world where these young sisters “managed to amplify their voice in a time when women were largely without one.”