The literary lives of us rural folks can be overly shaped by whatever happened to be available at our local library, or that one random anthology we found in a "free books" pile. I was extremely fortunate to have that anthology be The New American Poetry: 1945-1960, edited by Donald Allen. What a revelation! Kenneth Koch's sense of play, Frank O'Hara's "I do this I do that" poems, the whole New York School in general -- the Beats -- it just blew my head off. I had no idea you could do this stuff. There are newer, updated versions, but I hope enough battered copies of the original are still laying around where impressionable schoolchildren can find them.
Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she was raised off the grid. She holds a degree in applied mathematics and used to know a lot about infinite series. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart prize, and has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, PULP Literature, and elsewhere.
Read Dawn MacDonald's poetry in Issue 296 (Summer Poetry 2023)
