Mary Wilson Both, Apollo

"Both Apollo speaks from inside the bodies and binaries that are felt as constraints. Sometimes it tries to negotiate. It laments, celebrates, reasons, jokes, and occasionally begs. It runs into a wall and hugs it, offers it pizza, and speeds through therotary of grammars and cities until dizziness catapults it from the grid. It tries to queer the echoes of its language in the hope that a queer rhyme might break the logic of either/or and give rise to both/and. It would rather evade than refuse. It would rather embrace than hold. It's basically a love poem to whatever has the grace to appear. But the battleground is not all battle, even if there is no safe place above the fray. Moments of humor and tenderness accompany the speaker with each act of crossing and circling back. If the poems hope, this is where and how they do it: quietly, at the boundary"--
A poetry collection that employs intuition, humor, and celebration while seeking to break out of restrictive social structures. Mary Wilson’s Both, Apollo speaks from inside the bodies and binaries that so often act as constraints. It sometimes tries to negotiate its way out. It laments, celebrates, reasons, jokes, and occasionally begs. It runs into a wall and hugs it, offers it pizza, and speeds through grammars and cities until dizziness catapults it from the grid. It tries to queer the echoes of its language in the hope that a rhyme might break the logic of “either/or” and give rise to “both/and.” Both, Apollo is a love poem to whatever has the grace to appear, quietly finding hope. Moments of humor and tenderness accompany the speaker with each act of crossing and circling back. The poems in Both, Apollo are constantly in flux, and Wilson’s lyricism acts as a teaching tool for using both the real and the imagination to guide us in moment-by-moment navigation of our world. Both, Apollo won the Omnidawn Chapbook contest, selected by Victoria Chang.