iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Kathryn Cowles

Fence Magazine & Books @fencebooks.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Thank you to our wonderful readers—Kathryn Cowles, Geoffrey Babbitt, Nancy Flynn, Quinn Gancedo, & Isabel Zacharias—to my co-host Jeff Alessandrelli, to Carly & Chadwick at Word Virus, & to our sweet and receptive audience, for a special and connective reading last Thursday! 🍃

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Fence Magazine & Books @fencebooks.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Please join us to celebrate @kathryncowles.bsky.social & @geoffreybabbitt.bsky.social’s respective new poetry collections with a double book launch reading at Word Virus Books in Portland on July 16th at 7 PM! 🧵 With Nancy Flynn, Quinn Gancedo, & Isabel Zacharias. 🌞 @fonografeditions.bsky.social 💌

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Fence Magazine & Books @fencebooks.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Rain Taxi just published Kasey Jueds’ thoughtful, perceptive new review of THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR by @kathryncowles.bsky.social! 🧵 Order Rain Taxi for $5 to read this review, & wonderful etc. 💌 raintaxi.com/rain-taxi-re... & order STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS at Bookshop.org! 🌦️

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Fence Magazine & Books @fencebooks.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

This Saturday, May 23rd, Fence Books authors KATHRYN COWLES & BRANDON DOWNING will read (& share their collages / visual art!) at 5 PM sharp (doors at 4:30 PM) at Artists Space, 11 Cortlandt Alley, New York City! 🌱🧵✂️ Attend this final Fence-curated reading of the season! fenceportal.org/support 💌

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Perugia Press @perugiapress.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Amanda Auchter has a review of The Strange Wondrous Works of Eleanor Eleanor: A Catalog, by Kathryn Cowles, up at RHINO. Read the review at rhinopoetry.org/reviews/kath... @rhinopoetry.bsky.social @kathryncowles.bsky.social @alauchter.bsky.social

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Fence Magazine & Books @fencebooks.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

We’re excited to share Amanda Auchter’s review of THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR by @kathryncowles.bsky.social for RHINO Reviews! 🪽 This month's RHINO Reviews! also contains two reviews by Anthony Madrid, who edits Fence’s THE CONSTANT CRITIC. 📖 Read more at rhinopoetry.org/reviews!

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RHINO Poetry @rhinopoetry.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The latest issue of RHINO Reviews is live! Featuring: 🦏 Emily Pérez reviewing Natalie Shapero 🦏 @robeshoe.bsky.social reviewing @troycabida.bsky.social 🦏 @alauchter.bsky.social reviewing @kathryncowles.bsky.social 🦏 loads more! Find your next National Poetry Month read here: bit.ly/4sko9SJ

A screenshot of the Rhino Reviews page, showing book cover thumbnails in a 5x2 grid.

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Alina Stefanescu @alinaetc.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Kathryn Cowles’ THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR is truly one of the most beautiful literary forms I’ve read this year. Its subtitle is “A Catalog.” @fencebooks.bsky.social

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The Cincinnati Review @cincinnatireview.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Next week, @kathryncowles.bsky.social and Donald Revell read in University of Cincinnati's Elliston Room. Ahead of that, hear their advice for newer writers, craft suggestions, and more. Link in thread.

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Fence Magazine & Books @fencebooks.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Find THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR by @kathryncowles.bsky.social—& soon, NEW YORK IRONWEED by Amanda Deutch (publishing March 31, 2026)—at your local bookstore, or at bookshop.org! 💌 & you’ll find these book ads in print in FENCE #43; subscribe at fenceportal.org/subscribe. 😮

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Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪 @neonpajamas.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

It's all happening TONIGHT! Try to arrive by 6:30pm because we're starting exactly at 7:00pm

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Kathryn Cowles @kathryncowles.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

Just got an interview question about media influencing me right now. The brilliant Lorna Simpson did a series in the 2010s of Black women with hair replaced by crystal formations or smoke-like paint or printed language. I love how gorgeous and wild and fierce and celebratory these collages are.

Lorna Simpson’s Earth and Sky #24, 2016 shows a confident Black women with a slight grin looking sideways at the camera. In place of hair, crystals of sulfate, seemingly cut from a geology textbook, proliferate.

Jet #21, 2018. A beautiful Black woman looking slightly down at us, eyebrows lifted. In place of her hair, and scattered in other spots, printed text, as if from a newspaper, sometimes with red lettering, and fragmented phrases like “why American girls become singers abroad” or “where is third man in Till lynching.”

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Kathryn Cowles @kathryncowles.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

My brilliant former student now friend Daniel Schonning has a poem in poetry Daily, and woooooooow. I love it. And Eleanor sends a a wink. poems.com/poem/the-liv...

poems.com

The Living

Palette wood, thread, lemon rind, aluminum foil over papier- mâché.

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Fence Magazine & Books @fencebooks.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Celebrate Kathryn Cowles’s THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR, winner of the 2025 Fence Modern Poets Series Book Prize, in combination with Geoffrey Babbitt’s A GRAIN OF SAND IN LAMBETH this Thursday, February 5th at 7 PM! 💌 @kathryncowles.bsky.social @geoffreybabbitt.bsky.social

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Kathryn Cowles @kathryncowles.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Finger Lakes Friends: Double Book Release Reading! Thursday at 7 - HWS campus in Geneva (Demarest Hall) Kathryn Cowles and Geoffrey Babbitt. I’ll be handing out some tiny books❤️

Bright blue book release poster with author photos and book covers—Kathryn Cowles- The Strange Wondrous Works of Eleanor Eleanor; and Geoffrey Babbitt - A Grain of Sand in Lambeth.

Three little coloring books with a bird lady on the cover.

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Brenda Beardsley @brendapoet.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Loving ‘the strange wondrous works of Eleanor Eleanor’ by Kathryn Cowles, the winner of the Fence modern poet series award. This is an unforgettable collection that I can’t seem to stop talking about! #Fence #KathrynCowles#Literary #WritingCommunity #Poetry #UnsolicitedPress #Writers#SmallPress

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Burgi Zenhaeusern @burgi.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

What's in a painting? What in an entire catalog of Eleanor Eleanor's extant work & notes? Happy, happy publication day to @kathryncowles.bsky.social and The Strange Wondrous Works of Eleanor Eleanor!!!!! 💃✨🥰✨💃 (Fence Modern Poets Series, 2025)

The book on beige sofa (out of frame): photo collage of a winged woman (huge black and white wings) in ca. fifties style bathing suit, arms akimbo in her back, defiantly looking down on any beholder, in black&white photo material, on light blue background, orange half-frame. The book is square shaped

Clouds
Eleanor Eleanor
Acrylic on canvas
2005

This is a painting of a woman.
She is naked in her kitchen.
I paint her some clothes, a dress
and a long sweater with a belt,
some high-heeled boots.
She is still cold.
I paint her a winter coat with a woolen collar
and expensive gloves. The gloves
are red cashmere on the inside
and soft black leather on the outside.
I paint her hands into the hearts of the gloves.
I paint the new red rug leading out
of the kitchen, I paint the whole apartment,
I paint the door.
I paint its thick locks, its gold chains,
I paint its layers of paint, I paint
the outside of the door, the peephole,
the hallway with its hotel carpeting, I paint
the wooden stairs and the mailboxes.
I paint the stoop.
I paint the bicycle tied to the gate.
I paint the length of the street, and I
paint in trees. I paint a leashed bulldog walking
the lengthj of the street.

The bulldog turns a corner.
I paint the corner, the whole city block,
and the next block, and the next, I paint
the thoroughfare out to the sea.
I paint the whole downtown. I paint
the cityscape as seen
from a fishing boat 3 miles out.
Airplanes circle through clouds
in the sky waiting to land.
People sit in tightly gridded
configurations in the airplanes, reading
and hurtling through space at unthinkable speeds.
This is a painting of the people in the airplanes.
This is a painting of clouds.

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Kathryn Cowles @kathryncowles.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

It’s Book Release Day for The Strange Wondrous Works of Eleanor Eleanor! -Fence Modern Poets Prize -Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Prize for a manuscript in progress -Images in full color, thanks to the wonderful people at @fencebooks.bsky.social

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Kathryn Cowles @kathryncowles.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

Why yes, I am completely organized and ready for the semester to begin.

A desk covered with wild stacks of papers and books and a computer with a giant typewriter immediately behind it. Post-it notes and loose papers abound.

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Reposted by Kathryn Cowles

Fence Magazine & Books @fencebooks.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Winner of the 2025 Fence Modern Poets Series Book Prize, THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR by Kathryn Cowles meets readers and bookshelves on Tuesday, January 20th. 📖 @kathryncowles.bsky.social Pre-order this singular archive at Bookshop.org: bookshop.org/p/books/the-.... 🎬

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Fence Magazine & Books @fencebooks.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

ONE WEEK until the publication date of Kathryn Cowles (@kathryncowles.bsky.social)'s compilation of Eleanor Eleanor's poetry, captions, & full color collages: THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR, winner of the 2025 Fence Modern Poets Series. 🥳 Pre-order: bookshop.org/p/books/the-.... 🪽

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Burgi Zenhaeusern @burgi.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Get a hold on this book by @kathryncowles.bsky.social one way or another! It's a marvel ⭐️💖⭐️ #poetry 📚💙

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SarahJSloat @sjane.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Looking at some visual poetry today. This is from @kathryncowles.bsky.social's "Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World." Kathryn has a new book out next month that looks fantastic.

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Burgi Zenhaeusern @burgi.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

THANK YOU to @kathryncowles.bsky.social, @hanvanderhart.bsky.social & @kaseyryoen.bsky.social for supporting WHITE DOOR (Carbonation Press) with their generous words. I'm beyond honored! 💖🙏💖 And thank you, too, to Alan Sirulnikoff for letting me use his wonderful art for the cover! 🙏💖😍

Three copies of WHITE DOOR on patterned upholstery fabric. Cover image shows detail of Alternative Reality by Alan Sirulnikoff, photography: long logs and a white door among them, floating on dark water.

Image of blurbs as appearing in book listing:
From the first astonishing poem of White Door you can feel it—the stitching together of separated things, the line pulling away from the sentence and then hard-threaded back at stanza’s end, the then pulling away from the now, the child from the mother, frayed, and then hand-sewn back. Burgi Zenhaeusern’s language is stitch-work, textile, sensory, but the kind of sensory that begins to lean figurative, to mean more than it says. The I can be “light forced through / split clouds,” or “my shiny coin” can be “falling into the empty well of me—its bright ping,” the sun can be a she, “her mouth a white-hot hole,” fear can be “packed like old snow.” When I look up after disappearing into the careful weave of these poems, I am amazed to find how far moved I am from where I started, how completely everything behind me has changed in the new light.
- Kathryn Cowles, author of Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World

Framed by the tender ordinary, by branches through the kitchen window, by generational memory and a grandfather’s painted Alpine meadow, Burgi Zenhaeusern’s White Door asks the central question of poetry: “How long / can you continue without yearning?” Simone Weil wrote that unmixed attention is prayer, and this collection streams with the light of attention and language that feels to me holy.
- Han VanderHart, author of Larks

In White Door, Burgi Zenhaeusern circles back again and again to necessary, enduring questions—how to care for each other, what home is—refusing to settle for anything less than the real. Despite the way exploration tends to “re-etch longing,” despite the complexities of language and being, these poems do not give up their hunger to understand. Intelligence and integrity shine through them.
Kasey Jueds, author of The Thicket

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Fence Magazine & Books @fencebooks.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

…from Kathryn Cowles’s introduction to THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR. This winner of the 2025 Fence Modern Poets Series Book Prize will be out in now just less than a month: Dec. 9th, 2025! @kathryncowles.bsky.social Pre-order today at Bookshop.org: bookshop.org/p/books/the-.... 🪽

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Dr. Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

we must hurry while tenderness survives in us Susan Howe @ndbooks.bsky.social #booksky #poetry

Penitential Cries by Susan Howe, featuring a woodcut of little Timothy fleeing a demon figure of sin. Emily Dickinson sent this image in a letter to Susan the morning after a “revel,” with the note “ PS lest you misapprehend, the unfortunate insect upon the left is Myself, while the Reptile upon the right is my more immediate friends, and connections.” In the notes, in the back of the book ✨

arrive there is Lady Honoria Dedlock seated at her desk in Chesney Wold reading old love letters, even older than the ones our mother kept in a cardboard box beside the washing machine in the cellar.
Children can see a thousand miles off

Heart pictograph little frills.

Personal and individual solemn forms appear we must hurry while tenderness survives in us secret languages cherished beliefs swim-
ming in sun motes as if we had known then life expectancy or return to being ancient

Mitral tremolo sliding glissandi chaff

from Penitential Cries by Susan Howe (New Directions, 2025)

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Fence Magazine & Books @fencebooks.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

We’re truly delighted to share the cover of THE STRANGE WONDROUS WORKS OF ELEANOR ELEANOR by Kathryn Cowles (@kathryncowles.bsky.social), winner of the 2025 Fence Modern Poets Series! Cover design: Sharon DeGraw 💌 Pre-order today: bookshop.org/p/books/the-... 🌠

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Kathryn Cowles @kathryncowles.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

From finding out about this new book by the terrific poet @tracepeterson.bsky.social and having it my hands: less than five days. Can’t wait to read it!

A lavender glossy book cover with a sweeping black font. The title is THE VALLEYS ARE SO LUSH AND STEEP and the writer is Trace Peterson. The book is the winner of the Saturnalia Books 2025 Alma Book Award. Pictured next to some matching purple windfall mums.

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Alina Stefanescu @alinaetc.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

PUSHKIN TOWN It has rules. And love. And the first rule is. The love of chance. Some words of yours are very probably ore there. Or will be by the time our eyes are ember. - Anne Carson

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nikk @nikk.ca · 20/10/2025

absolute workhorse of a reaction image from over 100 years ago

elegant woman blasting a suitor in the face with the NO gun

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Kelsi J🎃 @kelsijosilva.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

Wait until they hear what the Greek Poets used to do.

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J G Orudjev | collage . mixed media art @nineteendegrees.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Sketchbook, mixed media collage. Part of a diptych. Slow clouds ii. mixed media collage found papers, acrylic, foil, wax #art #artist #artsky #collage #mixedmedia

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lex 🦇 @delightfulfreak.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

the human body was not made to take in this much bad news every single day

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Jeff Melnick @melnickjeffrey1.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

"When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week." --Willa Cather, 1925 and timeless

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The Slowdown @slowdownshow.org · 30/07/2025

“I feel a heavy kinship with the speaker in today’s poem. Their embrace of the world exhibits the ecstatic yearning and vulnerability essential to the imagination,” shares Major in today’s encore episode. Read “In Love” by Chloe Martinez: bit.ly/3U5Hx6H

An excerpt of “In Love” by Chloe Martinez

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Burgi Zenhaeusern @burgi.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

"In a place where institutions and systems have collapsed, it is the human gesture—freely given—that preserves the sacred." Alaa Alqaisi in Beneath the Howl of Hunger @arablit.bsky.social arablit.org/2025/07/23/b...

arablit.org

Beneath the Howl of Hunger

“And though the world may have looked away, let this much be remembered: we named the hunger. We bore it. We endured. Let that remain.” – Alaa Alqaisi

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Kathryn Cowles @kathryncowles.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

It’s the time of year for hot poems about fruit. Here’s the beginning of D. H. Lawrence’s “Medlars and Sorb-Apples”: I love you, rotten, Delicious rottenness. (You can read the rest yourselves, you beasts.)

The first bit of a poem with remarkably untidy underlining of key parts of the first few lines in blue ink:

Medlars and Sorb-Apples

I love you, rotten,
Delicious rottenness.

I love to suck you out from your skins
So brown and soft and coming suave,
So morbid, as the Italians say.

What a rare, powerful, reminiscent flavour
Comes out of your falling through the stages of decay:
Stream within stream.

Something of the same flavour as Syracusan muscat wine
Or vulgar Marsala.

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Frances “Poet Laureate of the Robot Alliance” Klein @fklein907.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Therapist: and are the ominous Newsweek bisexuals in the room with us now? Ominous Newsweek Bisexuals:

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Geoffrey Babbitt @geoffreybabbitt.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

A Grain of Sand in Lambeth has a cover! Many thanks to Caroline Dickens and the folks at UN Press for the design. Official release is December 2nd, which I am happy to share with the wonderful Jami Macarty’s The Long Now Conditions Permit, whose cover I also love. Preorder links below in comments.

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Erin Vachon (they/them) 🍉 @erinvachon.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

panic attacks count as cardio

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Kathryn Cowles @kathryncowles.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Holli Carrell is a writer to watch, friends. Just read a sample poem at the link and you’ll be preordering the book, just like I did. A clear descendant of Jean Valentine. I can’t wait for this one to arrive.

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Perugia Press @perugiapress.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

We’re excited to announce APOSTASIES by Holli Carrell: Release date September 15. Available NOW for preorder at a sale price till 9/15 at perugiapress.org/product/apos... and also available at asterismbooks. Check it out in our Linktree! @hollicarrell.bsky.social @asterismbooks.bsky.social

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