Three poems on the Debutiful podcast

For the First Taste series on the Debutiful podcast, I read the following poems from Cosmic Tantrum:

“Fate Myth with Manufactured Need”

“NO ONE WANTS TO VOLUNTEER FOR AN EMBODIMENT ON EARTH ANYMORE”

“Ars Poetica with Need and Wild Cats”

You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts

or you can listen on Spotify

or wherever else you like to listen!

Many thanks to Debutiful for inviting me as a guest, and for the lovely graphics :)

New essay at Literary Hub, and a reading list at Electric Literature

Poetry is a trickster of a genre: not fiction, not nonfiction, but also not not them: both/and, either/or. Likely predating the written word, poetry in ancient times saved and circulated information worth remembering, facts and fictions: history, genealogy, myths, legends, declarations of love.

Somewhere along the line, the concept of “the speaker” emerged—a hybrid of nonfiction’s rule that the narrator is the author, and fiction’s rule that the narrator is not the author but an imagined character.

With “the speaker,” poetry’s narration occupies a flirty, winking middle space: Who’s to say if the narrator is the author? Even when a poem insists on its nonfictional nature, as “Come On All You Ghosts” by Matthew Zapruder does (“in this poem // every word means exactly / what it means / when we use it in every day life”), the rules of poetry dictate that the “I” is never exactly the author—but the author in a costume, or another voice entirely.

(read the full essay at Literary Hub)

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(thank you to Pine State Publicity for the awesome graphic)

Say what you will about Scorpio people (and I hope you’re saying nice things because I know and love many Scorpios), but Scorpio themes make for heart-wrenching, compelling, juicy literature. Astrologer Chani Nicholas writes of “Scorpio’s underworld qualities, as well as its powers of regeneration.” Lately I’m fascinated by books featuring literal and psychological underworlds—which have captured the interest of readers and listeners for thousands of years, judging by the ancient Greek myth of Persephone and Hades, and the Mesopotamian myth of Inanna that preceded it. A person might become lost in an underworld, or else journey through one to discover something previously hidden about our own strength and resilience, and what we actually value.

Along with underworlds, Scorpio is associated with death and rebirth, something I took to heart while working on my poetry collection, Cosmic Tantrum: I spent years writing an initial version that I later threw away, starting over from scratch to make something that feels darker and more complex, more me. My birth chart shows four planets in my eighth house, which is ruled by Scorpio. The eighth house encompasses some of the thorniest and most intense aspects of life: death, yes, but also sexuality, transformation, taboos, the occult, other people’s money, and letting go of attachments. Having multiple planets in one house is called a stellium—or, as my tarot teacher and astrologer Jeff Hinshaw likes to say, a house party. I wanted my book to feel like that—like a cast of big personalities walking through a haunted house. And in this new form, it does: Big and Little Edie exchange psychic barbs in their crumbling Hamptons mansion, a “local beast” minds its own business while townsfolk enact a strongly worded letter, and an Eldest Daughter awakens from the sleepwalk of automatic compliance. 

Some of the books below percolated in the back of my mind while I wrote Cosmic Tantrum and some have come to me more recently. Each has inspired me with its willingness to plumb the depths of human experience, to sit companionably with mystery, and to find home and self-possession in and through the shadows. All of these qualities embody Scorpio energy, while the subjects and events of the books—taboos, inheritances, death, transformation—are aligned with the eighth house. Each book on the list feels kindred. I’m a Jill of all genres, so rather than narrow the list to just poetry, fiction, or nonfiction, this list is a mixer. A house party, if you will.

(read the full list at Electric Literature)

My book has a cover! (and she's a bratty little beaut)

(cross-posted from my Substack)

Hey, hi! I don’t normally send back-to-back newsletters in the same month, but I also don’t normally have such good news that I want to share right away!

This is the official cover for my forthcoming poetry collection, Cosmic Tantrum, which will be out February 15, 2025 from Curbstone Books (an imprint of Northwestern University Press). The cover is by Marianne Jankowski (mjdesign.studio) and is a real eye-catcher, IMHO. I love the bold graphics and the orbit lines and that audacious little spark at the bottom of the lightning bolt. Also, this font, which reminds me of Art Nouveau meets The Jetsons.

In addition to a cover, my book now has a page at NUP’s site where you can preorder it! (You should also be able to request by ISBN from your favorite indie bookstore.) Preorders really help authors, as they can signal to booksellers and sales reps that there’s a lot of interest in a book before it’s even out, which can mean more stores will carry the book, generating more interest, etc. 🔄

I’m running my own DIY preorder campaign inspired by a tarot offering I used to do (a mini-reading plus a custom poem). If you’re one of the first 50 preorders (and want this, lol), I will pull three cards for you and write you a little something in response to them. If you’re one of the first 100 preorders, I will send you a signed bookplate. ✍️

If those goodies are of interest to you, email a copy of your receipt to me at cosmictantrum [at] gmail [dot] com and let me know what address I can snail mail your goods to. 💌

Many thanks to Marianne Jankowski, my editor Marisa Siegel, and the whole NUP team. And many, many thanks to Rachel Feder, Taylor Byas, and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, who wrote such beautiful blurbs (and to Lucy Ives, whose beautiful blurb came in after the original version of this post went out):

“William Blake taught us that nothing could be scarier than fairy tales for grown-ups. T.S. Eliot taught us that selfhood inheres in the desire for self-erasure. Somewhere in the wild space between these guiding poetics, Sarah Lyn Rogers’s Cosmic Tantrum lays a table for tea.”—Rachel Feder, coauthor of Astrolit: A Bibliophile's Guide to the Stars

“As its title suggests, Sarah Lyn Rogers’s Cosmic Tantrum brilliantly confronts society’s infantilization of women by pulling an Uno reverse. What happens when society gets the ‘good girl’ that it asks for? These poems rage during meditations, they defy in corporate emails, they turn their brattiness up so loud that we all turn to watch their meltdowns. But in our watching, we are forced to reckon with our own discomfort with Rogers’s ‘outsized’ anger. This book reminds us that a tantrum is often a result of our own inattention and neglect. How do we soothe the monster we’ve created?”—Taylor Byas, author of I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times 

“Too much of this world’s currency / is shame,” writes Sarah Lyn Rogers, in Cosmic Tantrum, which frees childhood of its innocence to indict the false motives of conditional love. Flipping the language of business, fairy tale, and dissolution, Rogers rewrites girlhood to offer a refuge from domesticity. Shifting form and address to reason with Kafka, Charlie Brown, Little Edie in Grey Gardens, and the ghosts that haunt survival, Cosmic Tantrum summons mischief to banish harm." —Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of Touching the Art

“It seems incredible—nay, impossible—that so many great poems could reside in a single collection, but, reader, it is credible and it is possible, because this is a book by Sarah Lyn Rogers. I read each page with absolute greed, astonished by this jewel-like horde of gorgeous ironies and hard-won information about things hidden since the start of the world.” —Lucy Ives, author of An Image of My Name Enters America

Thank you so much for celebrating with me!

Out now: I DONE CLICKED MY HEELS THREE TIMES by Taylor Byas

It was an absolute honor to work on this collection with Taylor Byas, and I’m so glad everyone else can read it too and be floored by the power, grace, and agency of these poems. Taylor takes familiar forms and turns them on their heads, bends and sculpts them into something inevitable but surprising. Through it all, a clear picture emerges—of Chicago, of Black girlhood, of reclaiming the stories.

Inspired by The Wiz, this debut, full-length poetry collection celebrates South Side Chicago and a Black woman’s quest for self-discovery—one that pulls her away from the safety of home and into her power

I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times takes its inspiration and concept from the cult classic film The Wiz to explore a Black woman’s journey out of the South Side of Chicago and into adulthood. The narrative arc of The Wiz—a tumultuous departure from home, trials designed to reveal new things about the self, and the eventual return home—serves as a loose trajectory for this collection, pulling readers through an abandoned barn, a Wendy’s drive-thru, a Beyoncé video, Grandma’s house, Sunday service, and the corner store. At every stop, the speaker is made to confront her womanhood, her sexuality, the visibility of her body, alcoholism in her family, and various ways in which narratives are imposed on her.

Subverting monolithic ideas about the South Side of Chicago, and re-casting the city as a living, breathing entity, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times spans sestinas, sonnets, free-verse, and erasures, all to reimagine the concept of home. Chicago isn’t just a city, but a teacher, a lingering shadow, a way of seeing the world.

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*A NATIONAL BESTSELLER*

Shortlisted for the Maya Angelou Book Award
The Millions, A Must-Read Poetry Book of Summer

“A buoyant blast of South Side love and ache, conversing with Gwendolyn Brooks and Carl Sandburg, finding room for Harold’s Chicken and Claudia Rankine.” —Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

“In prose both heart wrenching in one line and hilarious the other, Byas paints a portrait of life in Chicago with all of its ups and downs.” —Sam Franzini, Our Culture Magazine

“A literary descendant of fellow Chicagoan Gwendolyn Brooks. Like Brooks, the 27-year-old Byas turns the everyday aspects of life into the exuberantly extraordinary . . . Her collection is a love letter to the city that made her—and to her own journey of self-discovery.” —Diamond Sharp, Chicago Magazine

“With vivid imagery and a staggering wit, Taylor Byas paints portraits of her childhood on the south side and the city in warm hues . . . Byas etches out the beauty in the most mundane parts of Chicago with a reflective eye . . . I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times offers a weighty contribution to Black Chicago’s poetry legacy.” —Reema Saleh, Chicago Reader

“This impressive debut is a celebration of Chicago’s South Side, telling the story of a Black woman’s quest for self-discovery. Every poem is alive with the beauty and intimacy of growing up in the city . . . [A] stunning achievement whose lyricism echoes some of Chicago’s greatest poets, including Gwendolyn Brooks and Eve L. Ewing.” —Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books

“It is impossible to understate the breadth and skill that Byas demonstrates throughout I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times . . . This collection is further proof that Byas is one of the most important voices in American poetry . . . We are experiencing a legend in the making.” —The Poetry Question

“[An] ecstatic debut . . . These nuanced and complex poems offer unforgettable snapshots of Black life in a vibrant city.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The poet uses her strong voice to deliver evocative, richly described snapshots . . . In this promising work, Byas tells an intimate story of growing up.” —Booklist (starred review)

“My fellow Chicagoans, rejoice. Taylor Byas’s poems are visually stunning and formally inventive. They give us more proof that everything dope does indeed come from Chicago.” —José Olivarez, author of Promises of Gold

“So many of the greatest poets in the American tradition have been Chicago Black women and this debut collection is an announcement that one more has joined that proud tradition. Byas’s work unfolds with tender attention to all sides of life in the Black metropolis. From mulberry trees to daisy dukes to candy ladies to liquor stores, this work sings of the city that raised me in an authentic way, with a careful formal attention befitting the lineage of Gwendolyn Brooks. This is a work to cherish.” —Nate Marshall, author of Finna: Poems

“In The Wiz, Dorothy finds the song of Oz and follows it down the road, easily—Taylor Byas unearths that spirit-music, too, in her stunning debut, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times. These poems illuminate Chicago, the body, the sweat of condensation on the Kool Aid cups cooling in the heat on a summer day in technicolor memory and careful music. It is the Chicago that’s there all along among the emerald streets, the self that is always there, the loud and frightening sparkle of a father’s memory, and the sharp edge of a lover’s rough touch. It is the shades of love blooming, green, across the South Side of Chicago. In fresh, inventive, and living formal verse and free verse, Taylor Byas paints the golden path, brick by brick, and we ease on down it.” —Ashley M. Jones, author of Reparations Now!: Poems

“Some collections attempt to build new worlds. Others return to old worlds and write them anew. Byas’ dive into the familial and the familiar is an intimate project, one that questions motherhood, love, and mourning in tandem. All this, in a Chicago that shole ain’t what this world tries to make of it. Taylor’s Chicago flexes and bristles and brims with life. In Byas’ work, Chicago is a/the world, one reimagined as a clever, raw, and beautiful character. Clever, especially so because Byas uses a vast toolbelt stocked well with forms and voice(s) and smirking candor. She tells us of and tells us the truth. Byas writes, ‘what we want has so little room to grow,’ yet all the while, makes room, makes room, makes room. Move out the damn way already!” —Aurielle Marie, author of Gumbo Ya Ya: Poems

2022 publications, an end-of-year roundup

Watching the end-of-year lists roll in from authors I admire, on the one hand, I feel like I didn’t publish much this year: a few poems, a book review. But it was gratifying to see so many books I had a hand in finally enter the world as beautiful, tangible objects meeting a brand new audience of readers. It’s also been a year of beginnings. I launched a newsletter mid-year, and started a business. I think it’s easy to feel like things we can make happen for ourselves “don’t count” or matter less, but lately I’ve been thinking of lighthouses, how they send out a glow that helps people orient themselves and find the glow’s source.

I’m grateful to the online journals that published my work this year, and to the amazing authors whose work I had the pleasure of editing, and/or who I had the honor of supporting in-house at Soft Skull and Catapult.

High-Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez, published 1/11/22. This hilarious, beautiful memoir on fighting machismo and finding joy in queer spaces was reviewed in the New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Lambda Literary, and On the Seawall, with other press at Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, TODAY, NBC News, the Los Angeles Times, and Oprah Daily,. And it’s sweeping the end-of-the-year best-of lists at Goodreads, HipLatina, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere.

I got to talk about High-Risk Homosexual at Publishers Weekly on 1/28/22, celebrating Edgar and their book being selected as an American Bookseller’s Association “Indies Introduce” title.

Path of Totality by Niina Pollari, published 2/8/22. This poetry collection, on the sudden and devastating loss of a child, is incredible. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly said “Pollari writes with straightforward, heartbreaking clarity. These poems are unflinching and powerful.” The New York Times selected Path of Totality as a best poetry book of the year.

MONARCH by Candice Wuehle, published 3/29/22. This novel, at the intersection of trauma psychology, Y2K aesthetic, and occult academia, received rave reviews at NPR (and was named an NPR best book of the year), ZYZZYVA, Chicago Review of Books, and the Wall Street Journal, with other press at NYLON, CrimeReads, Cleveland Review of Books, Luna Luna Mag, and Spin. MONARCH is also a contender in the 2023 Tournament of Books!

The Red Zone by Chloe Caldwell, published 4/19/22. This candid, funny, searingly honest memoir on PMDD was well received in reviews at the Washington Post, The Rumpus, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and Full Stop, with other press at AutoStraddle, the Cut, Electric Literature, BBC, and Thinx, and more.

Two of my poems— “APPLICANT MUST HAVE” and “LOCAL BEAST, KIND OF A LITTLE BITCH, ACTUALLY” were published at HAD on 5/1/22.

I launched this newsletter, Curiosity & Ritual newsletter, on the summer solstice, 6/21/22 :)

Death by Landscape by Elvia Wilk, published 7/19/22. This essay collection on plants, fiction, journalism, boundary-blurring, and the anthropocene was reviewed (and starred!) at Publishers Weekly, the New York Times, The Nation, and The Atlantic, with other press at The Paris Review, n+1, LitHub, CRAFT, The Creative Independent, and BOMB.

Normal Distance by Elisa Gabbert, published 9/13/22. This poetry collection on paradoxes and the tragicomedy of needing always to contend with time was reviewed at Publishers Weekly, Ploughshares, and Poetry Foundation, with other press at New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, LitHub, Chicago Review of Books, and The Slowdown with Ada Limón.

Best Debut Short Stories 2022: The PEN America Dau Prize, edited by Yuka Igarashi and me, with winning stories selected by judges Sabrina Orah Mark, Emily Nemens, and Deesha Philyaw, published 9/20/22. Catapult published a roundtable interview with the judges and PEN America interviewed all twelve winning writers. Other press at Debutiful, Book Riot, and LitHub. An excerpt of the book—Yuka’s & my co-written intro—ran at Hobart.

My poem, “I Could Signal Dominance in Email Correspondence as Trained But the Concept Is Offensive and I’m Baby” was published at Hobart on 9/27/22, with many thanks to guest editor Taylor Byas.

After I dispatched my 9/21 newsletter, my beautiful friend Jeff Hinshaw invited me to record myself reading it for their podcast, Cosmic Cousins. The episode aired on 9/25/22.

The Tiger and the Cage by Emma Bolden, published 10/18/22. This softly fierce memoir on endometriosis and the misogyny of modern medicine received great reviews at Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and LitHub, with other press at Shondaland, Motherly, Poets & Writers, BuzzFeed, Catapult, Electric Literature, Hazlitt, and Salon.

Annnd after ten years of freelance editing around whatever else I was doing, I officially launched my manuscript-consultation business as an LLC on 10/31/22, a nice Halloween birthday.

At the tail end of 2022, on 12/27, The Rumpus published my review of Elaine Hsieh Chou’s novel Disorientation, one of the best books I read all year.

See you all in 2023!