Craft: Laura Jensen

This craft piece was suggested by Maurya Simon. If you have a suggestion for a topic, please suggest one here:

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Laura Jensen (b. 1948) is the best poet many readers of poetry have never heard of or read before. Her last book was published 37 years ago. There is no meritocracy in poetry, and there is no parity in poetry. It seems unfathomable why some poets, such as a Billy Collins, are poetry famous for making McDonald’s (sugar, salt, starch), while others, such as Laura Jensen, are uncelebrated.

Some poets write for four years and get some recognition because of the myopia of the social media bubble; others, like Jensen, write for 40 years and seem to fall away from readers’ consciousness. Her poems are about intensity—the unknowability of life and death—pure and unadulterated, with no precedents or antecedents. They are Laura Jensen poems and demand multiple exegeses.