Rachel McKibbens
Poet, activist, playwright and essayist Rachel McKibbens is a New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and author of the critically acclaimed volume of poetry, Pink Elephant (Cypher Books, 2009.) Regarded as one of the most dynamic speakers in the country, McKibbens is a legend within the poetry slam community, noted for her accomplishments both on and off the stage: she is a nine-time National Poetry Slam team member, has appeared on eight NPS final stages, coached the New York louderARTS poetry slam team to three consecutive final stage appearances, is the 2009 Women of the World Poetry Slam champion and the 2011 National Underground Poetry Slam individual champion. For four years McKibbens taught poetry through the Healing Arts Program at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan and continues to teach poetry and creative writing and give lectures across the country as an advocate for mental health awareness, gender-equality and victims of violence and domestic abuse. Source
Mentor
“death cannot harm me
more than you have harmed me,
my beloved life.”
—Louise Glück
I tell my daughter first, because her knowing
forces it to become true. I have to leave dad.
Nothing is going to change. She nods
like a priest in a booth, the last fifteen years
staring down at us. Explains, softly,
how she’s spoken of me to her therapist.
Her worry of becoming my mirror. Tells me,
I remember you, mom, before him. You were happy.
Oh. Oh. To surrender to your death by someone else’s
hand is still a kind of suicide. Slower. I stand naked
on the porch as she recounts in perfect detail,
(in a poet’s detail) the very things I’d hoped
to disguise. My careful little spectator. Diligent neighbor
to my unnamed agonies. It is not ungrateful to resist
the tyrannies of obsession. It is no selfish act
to want, suddenly, to stay alive. My dear girl.
She is teaching and I am learning. I not only
want to be seen, I want to be seen through.
I return to my house, haunted and waiting.
I look into the mirror and notice the door.
Published:
2023
Length:
Regular
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2024
Themes:
Agency
Death & Loss
Family
Love & Relationships
Literary Devices:
Anaphora
a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences
Couplets
two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit
Dialogue
conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie
Epigraph
a short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter, intended to suggest its theme
Interrupted Clause
a word group (a statement, question, or exclamation) that interrupts the flow of a sentence and is usually set off by commas, dashes, or parentheses
Simile
a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”
Symbolism
a word, object, action, character, or concept that embodies and evokes a range of additional meaning and significance.