@egabbert

That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.

 Denver
elisagabbert.com/
Joined May 2009
  • Tweets115K
  • Following1.7K
  • Followers27.2K
1.6KMedia
OK I'll break my posting fast for Anne Carson: nytimes.com/2026/10/08/books…

Why Anne Carson, the New Nobel Laureate, Is the Easiest Difficult Poet (Gift Article)

Carson has mind-boggling range and formal audacity, our poetry columnist writes, but however much she toys with obscurity she remains too hilarious to be intimidating.

nytimes.com
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Elisa Gabbert retweeted
Neil Young 1971@BohemiaStableOct 7
9 years ago
Elisa Gabbert@egabbert18 Oct 2017
Replying to @KennyCoble
I think Anne Carson is a contender for the Nobel. Eventually.
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Elisa Gabbert retweeted
Longreads
@LongreadsJul 8
"Someone once sent me a model of the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared into the ocean. But the best gift? What a terrifying question. My college education? If anyone ever gives me a human skull, that will be it." @egabbert answers the @longreads questionnaire longreads.com/2026/07/08/lon…

The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Elisa Gabbert - Longreads

The author of Any Person Is the Only Self and recent Guggenheim fellow talks about the worst time of day, the value of wasting an hour, and chilaquiles.

longreads.com
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Elisa Gabbert retweeted
Cluny Journal
@ClunyJournalMar 19
"The essay allows us to enter the same state we enter in ritual, one where time feels layered, present over past, like a ladder we can climb up and down..." Time & the Essay by @egabbert, up now clunyjournal.com/p/time-and-…
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I'm about to break my posting fast with a very important announcement.
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That's right, it's time for EVERY BOOK I READ THIS YEAR, WITH COMMENTARY! Happy new year! elisagabbert.medium.com/ever…

Every book I read in 2025, with commentary

My catchphrase for the year, the sentence I think I thought and said out loud most often: “I feel alienated from society.”

elisagabbert.medium.com
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Look how much like Kafka Kafka looked as a child
Kafka as a child

ALT Kafka as a child

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A poet was talking about a friend who wrote book after book after book and I said, I admire that so much. Then she told me about another friend who barely writes at all and I said, I admire that too.
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My bridge poem. My Hart Crane moment
Academy of American Poets@POETSorg21 Jul 2025
Once there was a bridge I couldn’t cross.  Cusp of summer. Sound of insects carried with me, from Melville’s fields in my-heart-on-the-bridge, their zzzz. ––Elisa Gabbert @egabbert #PoemADay poets.org/poem/bridge

The Bridge

Once there was a bridge I couldn’t cross.

poets.org
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My lecture "30 Ideas About Writing Nonfiction" is up at @thecreativeindp today. Includes thoughts about structure, scale, tone, authority, titles, surprise, and what the word "interesting" means (it's one of my favorite words): thecreativeindependent.com/e…

30 Ideas About Writing Nonfiction – The Creative Independent

The poet, essayist, and critic Elisa Gabbert offers 30 ideas around making your nonfiction interesting.

thecreativeindependent.com
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I read two or three sentences by Claudio Magris recently and instantly loved him. This feels like writing for writing’s sake, it has a subject because one needs one, of course, but it could just as well have been about something else
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Just pick any subject then say what you want to, pick any subject that allows you to say what you want to
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The thing I want and love in art is life force -- experience is very nice too, but if you don't have that yet (too young) it's life force
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We at the Review mourn the loss of Alice Notley (1945-2025). In celebration of her life and work, we’ve unlocked her Art of Poetry interview, along with her poems, from our archive. buff.ly/qiSx3j8
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RIP to the incandescent Alice Notley. There's innumerable things to say about her and her work, but here's something she said in an interview about Ted Berrigan a couple of years ago, and it seems as fitting a tribute as anything
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Sometimes, when I can’t write the line I want to write, I just describe the line I want to write instead, a formal substitute, which often makes a better, more mysterious line
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Elisa Gabbert retweeted
Paul Wilson@bibliopaul6 Feb 2025
We’re joined by the amazing poet and essayist @egabbert to discuss books we think about all the time. We each share 3 books that are always on our minds and discuss the reasons some works become an important part of who we are. Which ones would you pick? open.substack.com/pub/mookse…?
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Book club, but I just read whatever I want whenever I want and then make people talk to me about it. We can have drinks too
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Plath quoted that bit in her own diaries: "And she works off her depression over rejections ... by cleaning out the kitchen. And cooks haddock and sausage. Bless her. I feel my life linked to her somehow"
Joyce Carol Oates
@JoyceCarolOates23 Jan 2025
Virginia Woolf took her own life on March 28, 1941. in addition to her remarkable prose fiction Woolf is one of the greatest diarists of all time. her last diary entry: "Haddock & sausage meat: one gains a certain hold on haddock and sausage by writing them down."
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❤️
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