Overview

*2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Finalist* The New Economy memorializes the world's pleasures and perils told through the point of view of an aging, ungendered body. A devotional to the ungendered vessel as it ages, dreams, and survives. A practice of radical collaboration, failure, and renewal. A world of ""Miss You"" poems opening a portal to all those we've lost and would love to visit for a while. In Gabrielle Calvocoressi's latest collection, The New Economy, poems are haunted by the ghosts of loved ones and childhood memories, by changing landscapes and bodies. Calvocoressi's own figure is examined-investigating the desire to protect the body one is born with and the longing to have been born in another. Cisterns sing with the musicality of a poet who understands both the power of sound and silence-those quiet spaces inviting us to consider the words we cannot hear. ""The days I don't kill myself are extraordinary"" one poems says. ""Why don't we have a name for it?"" Lyrical and unafraid, The New Economy invites us to name our fears and sorrows, to write to who or what has left us, to create practices that can hold both the darkness and light of this (in)finite life.

Full Product Details

9781556597213

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for The New Economy “Survival and renewal are at the heart of Calvocoressi’s exploration of childhood memories, the ungendered body’s aging, and the commitment to living through fear and pain.”—Maya Popa, Publishers Weekly Top Ten Fall Preview 2025 “The enchanting latest from Calvocoressi . . . examines the dichotomy of the body and soul, and the joys and sorrows each provide, through the lens of aging. . . . Survival is revolutionary in this brilliant collection.”—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW “In The New Economy, meditations on desire, change, and adaptation result in poems that speak to the most secret parts of ourselves. Fans of Calvocoressi’s exuberant poetry will fall in love with this newest collection and its meticulous unravelling and reorganizing of aging, death, grief, joy, and gender.”—Electric Lit, Best Poetry Collections of 2025 “Hopelessness is a beloved enemy in these poems, a necessary muse. So are grief and fear. 'The days I don’t want to kill myself/ are extraordinary,' begins the most affirming poem about suicide I’ve ever read. All of our violence, Gabrielle Calvocoressi asserts—with a compassion so pure it feels out of step with the times—is born of fear: Violence begins in each of us, is always inflicted first upon ourselves. These poems urge us to do better—we must. The collection was a finalist for the National Book Award.”—Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR ""Books We Love 2025"" “The . . . poems in The New Economy glimmer with exuberance and sensuality, turning otherwise tedious, clichéd concepts into fertile opportunities for connection with the modern environment.”—Yvonne Kim, Los Angeles Review of Books Praise for Gabrielle Calvocoressi “Calvocoressi resists the limitations of language―especially where gender is concerned―to more fully capture the experience of a self 'unlimited in its possibilities.' . . . These poems balance wildness and control in a fearless treatment of eros, identity, trauma, and all that resists easy categorization. The voice encompasses the colloquial as well as the high lyrical. . . . When particular forms aren’t up to the task of rendering something with tender and unflinching attentiveness, Calvocoressi reaches outside of poetry altogether: 'Oh. It. Was. Beautiful. No metaphor will do.'”—Publishers Weekly “Gabrielle Calvocoressi is one of those writers I love so much that I look at bookstores' shelves hoping she's written a new book. Now she has, and the pleasure of these new poems about gender, God, loss, joy, politics, love and the struggle for meaning in language and in this difficult moment in the United States are all here for us- and we're richer for it. Go find what's lush, what's troublesome, what's an invitation to your own path in this magnificent new collection.”—Rebecca Solnit “She is a daring act as a poet/athlete . . . but she can also travel the backwoods, pointing out herons, ivy vines and creek water with a kind of divining rod rightness. . . . Her wild lyrics shudder and shine, jubilant and threatening, exuberant.”—Carol Muske-Dukes, The Huffington Post “I did not want this book to end. It is wide open, vulnerable, and seductive—the most compelling thing I have read this year, without contest, and so very timely.”—Sarah Warren, World Literature Today “An excoriation of present-day America by a new and lethal commentator.”—Times Literary Supplement

Praise for The New Economy “Survival and renewal are at the heart of Calvocoressi's exploration of childhood memories, the ungendered body's aging, and the commitment to living through fear and pain.""—Maya Popa, Publishers Weekly Top Ten Fall Preview 2025 “The enchanting latest from Calvocoressi . . . examines the dichotomy of the body and soul, and the joys and sorrows each provide, through the lens of aging. . . . Survival is revolutionary in this brilliant collection.""—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW “In The New Economy, meditations on desire, change, and adaptation result in poems that speak to the most secret parts of ourselves. Fans of Calvocoressi's exuberant poetry will fall in love with this newest collection and its meticulous unravelling and reorganizing of aging, death, grief, joy, and gender.""—Electric Lit, Best Poetry Collections of 2025 “Hopelessness is a beloved enemy in these poems, a necessary muse. So are grief and fear. 'The days I don't want to kill myself/ are extraordinary,' begins the most affirming poem about suicide I've ever read. All of our violence, Gabrielle Calvocoressi asserts—with a compassion so pure it feels out of step with the times—is born of fear: Violence begins in each of us, is always inflicted first upon ourselves. These poems urge us to do better—we must. The collection was a finalist for the National Book Award.""—Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR ""Books We Love 2025"" “The . . . poems in The New Economy glimmer with exuberance and sensuality, turning otherwise tedious, clichéd concepts into fertile opportunities for connection with the modern environment.""—Yvonne Kim, Los Angeles Review of Books “A portal of hauntings and extraordinary song, summoning readers to have courage amidst their own sorrows. Calvocoressi honors the magic and sacredness of an ungendered body, sustaining a devotional poetic voice throughout these investigative, unafraid, and sincere poems. They masterfully make space for both longing and self-acceptance, the fear and the light within us all, conjuring a deeply personal collection that is timelessly urgent.""—Livia Meneghin, Adroit Journal “A luminous and unflinchingly tender book that remakes the terms by which we understand grief, embodiment, desire, and witness. These poems contend with the starkest conditions—suicidal ideation, non-binary embodiment, disability, material longing, global violence—yet they narrate these experiences from a posture of radical empathy and imaginative abundance.""—Kimberly Grey, On the Seawall Praise for Gabrielle Calvocoressi “Calvocoressi resists the limitations of language―especially where gender is concerned―to more fully capture the experience of a self 'unlimited in its possibilities.' . . . These poems balance wildness and control in a fearless treatment of eros, identity, trauma, and all that resists easy categorization. The voice encompasses the colloquial as well as the high lyrical. . . . When particular forms aren't up to the task of rendering something with tender and unflinching attentiveness, Calvocoressi reaches outside of poetry altogether: 'Oh. It. Was. Beautiful. No metaphor will do.'""—Publishers Weekly “Gabrielle Calvocoressi is one of those writers I love so much that I look at bookstores' shelves hoping she's written a new book. Now she has, and the pleasure of these new poems about gender, God, loss, joy, politics, love and the struggle for meaning in language and in this difficult moment in the United States are all here for us- and we're richer for it. Go find what's lush, what's troublesome, what's an invitation to your own path in this magnificent new collection.""—Rebecca Solnit “She is a daring act as a poet/athlete . . . but she can also travel the backwoods, pointing out herons, ivy vines and creek water with a kind of divining rod rightness. . . . Her wild lyrics shudder and shine, jubilant and threatening, exuberant.""—Carol Muske-Dukes, The Huffington Post “I did not want this book to end. It is wide open, vulnerable, and seductive—the most compelling thing I have read this year, without contest, and so very timely.""—Sarah Warren, World Literature Today “An excoriation of present-day America by a new and lethal commentator.""—Times Literary Supplement

""Calvocoressi resists the limitations of language―especially where gender is concerned―to more fully capture the experience of a self ""unlimited in its possibilities.” . . . These poems balance wildness and control in a fearless treatment of eros, identity, trauma, and all that resists easy categorization. The voice encompasses the colloquial as well as the high lyrical… When particular forms aren’t up to the task of rendering something with tender and unflinching attentiveness, Calvocoressi reaches outside of poetry altogether: 'Oh. It. Was. Beautiful. No metaphor will do.'""—Publishers Weekly ""Gabrielle Calvocoressi is one of those writers I love so much that I look at bookstores' shelves hoping she's written a new book. Now she has, and the pleasure of these new poems about gender, God, loss, joy, politics, love and the struggle for meaning in language and in this difficult moment in the United States are all here for us- and we're richer for it. Go find what's lush, what's troublesome, what's an invitation to your own path in this magnificent new collection."" —Rebecca Solnit ""She is a daring act as a poet/athlete . . . but she can also travel the backwoods, pointing out herons, ivy vines and creek water with a kind of divining rod rightness. . . . Her wild lyrics shudder and shine, jubilant and threatening, exuberant.” —Carol Muske-Dukes, The Huffington Post ""I did not want this book to end. It is wide open, vulnerable, and seductive—the most compelling thing I have read this year, without contest, and so very timely.” —Sarah Warren, World Literature Today ""An excoriation of present-day America by a new and lethal commentator."" —Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart,Apocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize), and Rocket Fantastic,and a residency from the Civitella di Ranieri Foundation, among others. Calvocoressi's poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House,and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an Editor at Large at Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Editor at Southern CulturesWorks in progress include a non-fiction book entitled, The Year I Didn't Kill Myselfand a novel, The Alderman of the Graveyard. Calvocoressi teaches at UNC Chapel Hill and lives in Old East Durham, NC, where joy, compassion, and social justice are at the center of their personal and poetic practice. Calvocoressi is the Beatrice Shepherd Blane Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute for 20222023.

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