In the introduction to her first book of poetry in 12 years, Patricia Lockwood states that, “For almost a decade … I had not been able to hear it. The poems that I wrote would not end … too much was happening, there was a different kind of attention being paid.” It wasn’t that she didn’t want them to arrive. From Cave Painting: “And does she still write poems? / Not a whole one since I had been ill. / Five years. I kept saying I was / Doing it privately. So private even / I didn’t know about it.”
In that intervening period, Lockwood’s status has jumped from interesting US poet famous for the viral sensation Rape Joke to literary superstar: an acclaimed memoirist and novelist whose freewheeling, antic style is for many the internet’s maelstrom lassoed and put back on to the page. Who else can claim to have turned an audience with the pope into a biting comic essay?
