Hagood has created a hybrid text that marries memoir, criticism, and poetry, calling to mind Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be and Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely. But the insistence of the personal as the poetic politic is reminiscent of Second Wave feminist, Betty Friedan’s seminal text The Feminine Mystique, only reimagined for the Instagram generation.
Ways of Looking at a Woman is itself a hybrid work, an exciting mix of memoir and poetry that looks at Hagood’s experiences of writing and becoming a mother through a lens of literary and film theory. It’s also wonderfully funny in places. When I saw Hagood read recently at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, she and the audience cracked each other up during the Q&A, talking about the inspiring postcard photo of Virginia Woolf that she keeps over her desk and the life-giving necessity of snacks.
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Thursday, April 4 at 7:30 at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street. This book launch event will celebrate the publication of Caroline Hagood’s book, Ways of Looking at a Woman. Signed copies of the book will be available for purchase. Hagood will be in conversation with Rachel Lyon, author of the book, Self-Portrait With Boy.
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DISCUSSED
Poets she’s been turning to, as of late:
Mark Strand, Charles Simic, Philip Levine
Kevin Young, Andrew Zawacki, Stanley Kunitz
Caroline Hagood, and Jorie Graham
"What’s the difference between poetry and other writing? Poetry is writing minus the traffic lights, bridges, and boring parts."
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"In this interview, we talk about Making Maxine’s Baby, the relationship between horror and healing, and how her academic work influences her creativity."
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"[Parker] gets increasingly animated as she talks about some of the poets she enjoys, including . . . Caroline Hagood.”
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"The notion of the poetry goddess is as far-reaching as it (she?) is elusive, coy, erudite, and sensual. So much of this construction depends on usage and context — as is de rigueur for many things we associate with femininity. "
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