Distilled

– Whiteout Poems by Angelique Zobitz –

Poet’s Statement: Of the many ironies of this year, is the realization of how closely upheaval and transformation are intertwined with one another, how disrupted routines encourage sustained attention to concerns that have been neglected, and that there are important and often times competing and even complimentary narratives that live within what we can easily see. My thinking through how I can be in conversation with texts, authors, ideas that are important to me, not erasing stories or connections but bringing out the connections and relationships between my own history and future and those texts’ histories and pasts has culminated in the above features series of white-out poetry, titled “Distilled.” The poems leverage Book Four of one of my favorite writers –Madeleine L’Engle (author of a Wrinkle in Time)’s, Crosswicks Journals. Book Four specifically recounts the highs and lows of the life L’Engle built and cherished with her husband Hugh Franklin, and explored their married lives inevitably marked by love and death. Through this process, I’ve created something new that is still about marriage but also uniquely my own.

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References:

Masochists Source: L’Engle, Madeleine. Two-Part Invention: the Story of a Marriage (Crosswicks Journal
Bk. 4), by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988, p. 8

Kything Source: L’Engle, Madeleine. Two-Part Invention: the Story of a Marriage (Crosswicks Journal
Bk. 4), by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988, p. 192

in doubt Source: L’Engle, Madeleine. Two-Part Invention: the Story of a Marriage (Crosswicks Journal Bk. 4), by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988, p. 195

Song Source: L’Engle, Madeleine. Two-Part Invention: the Story of a Marriage (Crosswicks Journal Bk. 4), by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988, p. 202

Angelique Zobitz

Angelique Zobitz is the author of the chapbook ‘Love Letters to the Revolution’ forthcoming November 2020 from American Poetry Journal. She is a Spring 2019 Black River Chapbook Competition Finalist, 2020 Best New Poets nominee and a two-time 2019 Best of the Net nominee. Zobitz’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal, Sugar House Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Adirondack Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts of the African Diaspora, Yemassee Journal, So to Speak and many others. She lives in West Lafayette, Indiana with her husband, daughter, and a wild rescue dog and can be found at www.angeliquezobitz.com and on Twitter and Instagram: @angeliquezobitz.