Author: Carlos Andrés Gómez

For more than a decade I’ve submitted and (far longer than that) dreamed of one day seeing my work in this legendary journal. Sinking in as I hold my contributor’s copy now—my poem, “How to Hold Water,” appears in the latest issue of The Kenyon Review.

A lot of my new manuscript attempts to unearth language for the unsayable, excavates what language evades, where it mistranslates, fails, or, sometimes, how it might reframe or create something new where it falters.

This poem took years to emerge. It’s profound how my children were saving me before they were even conceived, reaching from the beyond to offer the hope of what we’d one day share.

It’s so special to appear alongside absolute legends and friends like Victoria Chang, Julia Kolchinsky, Meghann Plunkett, Maya C. Popa, Patrick Rosal, Ross White, and so many others.

My immense gratitude to Nicole Terez Dutton, Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, Nayt Rundquist, Danilo John Thomas, Elizabeth Wagner, Sara Carminati, Michael Coppola, Clair Oleson, & the entire rest of the KR team. I cannot say thank you enough for your generosity and care.

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Wildly miraculous, Bucket List moment: my poem, “a little tenderness,” closes out the new issue of Poetry magazine.

This poem is perhaps the longest one in the new (yet-to-be picked up for publication) full-length poetry manuscript. It’s about a night out sophomore year of high school, of being fifteen and what it means to be on the precipice (of all things: brutal, beautiful, necessary, inevitable). And what does that kid continue to teach me now?

In an era where I’ve watched not just voices but personhoods flattened by the scourge of AI, I’m increasingly inclined toward the messy, flawed, jagged edges of being human. What unsettles and discomfits and knots my throat until I weep?

What a long-shot my entire writing life has been: from a kid who learned to read so late, still reads slowly and ploddingly, and continues to scandalize gatekeepers of the canon for my multihyphenations as an artist, for being able to make a room full of people stand on their feet with just my voice.

My endless gratitude to the incomparable Adrian Matejka, whose editorial sensibilities really leave me in awe (these poems you’ve platformed during your run!), Holly Amos, Iván Pérez, Jeremy Lybarger, Lindsey Garbutt, Angelica Flores, Whitney Hallberg, & and the entire team at the Poetry Foundation. Thank you for seeing my poem and giving it a home with you all. A dream, truly.

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