'Maggie Nelson is one of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation' Olivia Laing In this, her second anthology of poetry, Maggie Nelson experiments with poetic forms long and short as she charts intimate landscapes, including the poet's enmeshment in a beloved city-New York-before and after the events of 9/11. The poems of The Latest Winter are rich with wit, melancholy, terror, curiosity, and love. “Nelson's writing is fluid – to read her story is to drift dreamily among her thoughts” ― Praise for The Argonauts, Huffington Post “Maggie Nelson writes like no one else on the planet” ― Praise for The Argonauts, Jezebel “One of the great gifts of Nelson's writing is how it embodies the process of her mind at work” ― Praise for The Argonauts, Los Angeles Review of Books “Nelson is so outrageously gifted a writer and thinker” ― Praise for The Argonauts, Washington Post “Nelson's poems move fast, think on their feet, hit and run with equal parts of humor; glamor and horror. In every way, she is a thoroughly original voice for our time.” ― Elaine Equi “Maggie Nelson [is] so much better than anything I've read for a long, long time” ― Praise for The Argonauts, Karl Ove Knausgaard “I read The Argonauts in one breathless, tearful, mind-blown day and I'm still recovering” ― Praise for The Argonauts, Miranda July Maggie Nelson is a poet, critic, and award-winning author of 'The Argonauts', 'Bluets', 'The Art of Cruelty', 'Jane: A Murder' and 'The Red Parts'. She lives in Los Angeles, California. The Latest Winter By Maggie Nelson Zed Books Ltd Copyright © 2018 Maggie Nelson All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-78699-469-1 Contents I., The Poem I Was Working On Before September 11, 2001, 3, Twin of sheen, 8, Brightness, 9, 1999, 10, Train to Coney Island, 13, Blockbusters, 14, the future of poetry, 15, my life as an exchange student, 17, Holed Up, 19, Juliet, 20, Lucia, 22, Poem Written in Someone Else's Office, 23, Goodbye to All That, 29, II., 29, 33, Imagine, 35, Birthday Poem, 36, Anatomy, 41, Love #1, 43, Julie, 44, Aubade, 47, Love #2, 48, Words to a Woman, 49, Sunday, 54, Maine, 56, Valentine, 58, Death Canoe, 59, III., The Latest Winter, 63, Last Day at the Office, 69, Motor Inn, 70, Walk on Campus, 71, 5 Huber, 73, The Earth in April, 74, Spring in the Small Park, 75, Goodbye at the start of summer, 76, July, 77, Summer Rain, 78, Kaspar Hauser, 80, *, 81, Report from the Field, 82, Dear Lily, 85, The Future, 87, December 23, 2001, 89, In a war, 90, Silence, 91, Dailies, 93, CHAPTER 1 The Poem I Was Working On Before September 11, 2001 after Louise Bourgeois Say something awful, say "She leaned on the fork" Say something beautiful, say "Eyes smudged with soft kohl" Now lead the way under the spiders, yes under the spiders where a bad woman rules. Glassy white eggs in a wrought-iron grid — she almost goes through with it. Engulfed in a perfect day, the pressure lifts — urban life is OK as long as there is still wind, something new to breathe, though do you want to know what that strange smell is Well I'll tell you it's the fumigation of the lizards in the subway system, KEEP CLEAR, DO NOT INHALE O you're so gullible. But can I breathe here — where? — in this tiny circle, where the homunculus is hopping on the gamelan and playing the song of joyful death — just think about that. Say something nice, say "Your sexiness is necessarily an aporia, but that just means nothing can ever demolish it." Now that we're grown up and have no willpower (of all things!) The absurdity is I hope this will never, ever end — not the banging on the can, not the dark brown liquid in the blue glass. I love it here, on earth — I don't care a fig for what comes next, which is exactly what the suicide bomber said of the Israelis he killed yesterday at the discoteque. There is something bestial in me, it wants to be drunk on saliva, and there is something ugly about me, which has to do with my fear of dying of hives. But above all there is something very lovely about today, the day I wandered beneath a great spider and the city opened itself up as if to apologize for its heat and changing ways. Don't sit there slobbering all over the thermometer! The least you could do is try to capture an enigma with an image, or don't sweat it — out West my mother is fondling the stone bellies of the Three Graces. She waters everything at night now, she is the night-gardener, she goes out with a flashlight and looks for insects doing their deeds. Looks for all that oozes underneath. Yesterday I saw a man burn a strip of skin off his arm — he just threw the skin in the trash and for a moment we all stood there, staring at the bright white streak on his arm. It didn't look like anything. Then the red blood st