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Kent Shaw

Kent Shaw's first book, Calenture, was published by University of Tampa Press. His poems have appeared in The Believer, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Boston Review, and elsewhere. He is currently an Assistant Professor at West Virginia State University.

The Valuations of Certain Family Values

By Kent Shaw
Poetry•Vol. XXV No. 3 (Fall 2012)

There’s a way the people in Texas live, the wealthy ones, who take in each day with all its complicated successes, and commodities,           and general well-being. It’s like they’re the mountains of Texas. And they’re just waiting for us to figure that out. A mountain range of distinguished lineage. With individual privacy screens, because a… [Read More]

How I Would Describe the Anatomy of a Heron

By Kent Shaw
Poetry•Vol. XXV No. 3 (Fall 2012)

I wanted to put the river inside a box. The marshy part. So I could take it to my family and explain the meaning of a river. But the river wouldn’t stay. I taped a voice shut instead. It wasn’t mine. It was a stranger’s. And it was breathing inside there. Like an animal breathing… [Read More]

How a Country Can Lay Claim To Having People

By Kent Shaw
Poetry•Vol. XXV No. 3 (Fall 2012)

In this country, everyone depends entirely too much on conjunctions,           mainly the “and,” but also the conjunctions that indicate a clear choice is right in front of us, like frisson or feverish, like bombardiers or exclamation points. We are fashionable. And supremely collapsible. We were designed by toymakers to appear very enthusiastic. Sometimes we pile… [Read More]

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