us clumsy gods
“ash good sings a philosophical thrum between the ‘i’ and the ‘we,’ acknowledging how our multiple voices are ‘indistinguishable from stars.’ … Personal, and political, this beautiful book burns in timeless revolution.”
—Elena Karina Bryne
author of If This Makes You Nervous
Available October 2022
"...curious, persistent, tender, and embracing of multiplicity..."
“...language that breathes and flows like a field of multi-hued sea anemones...”
“...a voice as spare and natural as Gary Snyder’s, as insightful and alchemical as Rumi’s...”
“...threshold-crossing, body wise, utterly alive, tough, lyrical, concrete always, sensual always...”
"...curious, persistent, tender, and embracing of multiplicity..." “...language that breathes and flows like a field of multi-hued sea anemones...” “...a voice as spare and natural as Gary Snyder’s, as insightful and alchemical as Rumi’s...” “...threshold-crossing, body wise, utterly alive, tough, lyrical, concrete always, sensual always...”
Praise for us clumsy gods
What Books Press, 2022
“Unflinchingly clear sighted, ash good’s movingly expansive and innovative collection refuses to turn away from the demands of seeing truth in the efforts of evolving. Breathtaking courage, however, never sacrifices beauty as language and imagery break free of old forms while maintaining reverence for lineage. The personal toggles back and forth with the universal, the eternal and the daily simultaneously felt and translated into a collage of language that breathes and flows like a field of multi-hued sea anemones. This powerful voice never shies from disturbance, knowing facing turbulence with a sustained intense awareness opens portals to the overwhelming mystery of our human condition in relationship to our bodies, one another, and the natural world. In these gorgeous new poems, we are reminded how to reunite with each other, with nature, and with truth.”
—Holaday Mason, author of The Weaver’s Body
“ash good’s latest collection is the kind of poetic company I love to keep: curious, persistent, tender, and embracing of multiplicity. The speakers of these poems expand and contract their vision to critically examine what they’ve been told, what we’ve been told, about who we are and how we are. Good is not here to accept anything at face value. They don’t promise answers, for which I am grateful, but they do insist that we are more than what others want from us. Deftly dipping into childhood memories, adolescent discoveries, collective grief and the thirst for justice and radical self-love, they do not blink in the face of ‘intimate devastations’ nor do they get lost in loss. Instead, this inventive poet keeps questing because while ‘no one taught us to dream or breathe,’ we dream and breathe anyways, and they are going to make damn sure we don’t forget that.”
Jessica E. Pierce, author of Consider the Body, Winged
greedy
Cimarron Review, No. 216
Oklahoma State University
when we master that space between
Blood Tree Literature, No. 11
Reprinted, Potted Purple, No. 12
we meant for that to happen
45th Parallel, No. 7
Oregon State University
an entire world depends on you consistently dreaming yourself alive
45th Parallel, No. 7
Oregon State University
sound of stay & grow come out of the same mouth
Best of the Net Nominated
Birdcoat Quarterly, No. 9
want for beauty that could kill me
Birdcoat Quarterly, No. 9
i don’t want to be careful
Faultline Journal of Arts & Letters, Volume 31, Spring 2022
UCI Irvine
what trance parts the sea at its own will?
Faultline Journal of Arts & Letters, Volume 31, Spring 2022
UCI Irvine
us? beautiful / prepared for our own demise
Cathexis Northwest Press, October 2021
relieved to be small in a wave that will never relent
Cathexis Northwest Press, October 2021
nothing is stopping us
Cathexis Northwest Press, October 2021
let us wake different
deLuge Literary and Arts Journal, No. 7.1
theme park polaroids
Gulf Stream Magazine, No. 29
Florida International University
this is what it feels like to love
House Journal, February 2022
this is what i will tell them
Imposter: A Poetry Journal, Volume 2, No. 2
poems
“but can novelty be our gender?“
Rise Up Review, Summer 2021
my third grade teacher isn’t squeamish
The Timberline Review, 2020
we move & stars blur
The Cape Rock, No. 50
Southeast Missouri State University
what i apprehend of time travel
Voicemail Poems, Summer 2021
Reprinted, The Cape Rock, No. 50
serious child
Wild Roof Journal, No. 13
walking alone
Willawaw Journal, No. 13
i haven’t
Not Very Quiet, No. 8
are you in touch with
Potted Purple
happening everywhere all at the same time
Potted Purple
the realness of body
Potted Purple
something heroic about curling into a fetal position to hold the multiverse under the bed
High Priestesses of Poetry Anthology, Volume 1
altar offering to what we cannot know
High Priestesses of Poetry Anthology, Volume 2
so many things we must be alone enough for
High Priestesses of Poetry Anthology, Volume 2
if you see us dancing know
High Priestesses of Poetry Anthology, Volume 2
it takes light years to get around things
High Priestesses of Poetry Anthology, Volume 2
taut center / loose edges
High Priestesses of Poetry Anthology, Volume 3
look at you baby self
High Priestesses of Poetry Anthology, Volume 3
awake
High Priestesses of Poetry Anthology, Volume 3
ash good is a nonbinary queer poet & designer living, playing & working in Portland, OR. They are the author of five books & chapbooks, cofounding editor at First Matter Press (a 501c3 nonprofit), guide to Set Your Stories Free (a weekly generative workshop), curator of High Priestesses of Poetry & a reader for Frontier Poetry. Their poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net & appears in Faultline Journal of Arts & Letters, Cimarron Review, 45th Parallel, Chautauqua, Bird Coat Quarterly, Gulf Stream Magazine, Voicemail Poems & others.
Praise for these things will never happen quite like that again
LettersAt3AMPress, 2017
“In this vital new collection of poems by Ash Good, desire for the sacred, desire for oneness with the Beloved, becomes a journey and a story. This journey/story begins with visionary observations such as ‘the universe fits in that two-man tent,’ and concludes with the epiphany-like acknowledgment of ‘the gauze/of the thing/that connects everything.’ Here, inner life and outward existence—spirit and body—are both given their due in a voice as spare and natural as Gary Snyder’s, as insightful and alchemical as Rumi’s. Open These Things Will Never Happen Quite Like That Again, read it cover to cover, and enter the sacred and sensuous space created by this gifted poet. You will want to reside there.”
—Gail Wronsky, author of So Quick Bright Things
“Imagine Frank O’Hara reincarnated as some female Kerouac vision-questress rolling through the West…who knows that ‘magic’ lives ‘in the verisimilitude’ of every moment, whether it’s one of transporting erotic satori or the precise I-do-this-I-do-that kensho of quotidian chore…Even the title is less a memento mori than a memento vivere. Moments bloom into double-take beads on a string that remind us to recognize why, when fully and openly entered, some acts are too sacred to name. Genre doesn’t matter here. Journey does: into the heart of remembering both the point of and method for everything: love.”
—Sarah Maclay, author of Music for the Black Room
“These Things Will Never Happen Quite Like That Again is a read-in-one-sitting kind of book—and then you read it again to see where you’ve been. It’s not a poem, except when it is. It’s too impressionistic to be called a memoir—but aren’t impressions all we have? It’s not a story—or is it? What it is is: a word-being that refuses classification. It couldn’t care less what you call it; in fact, by the end, you may be more concerned about what it calls you. A critic might call it experimental but I call it a voice, utterly alive, tough, lyrical, concrete always, sensual always—a voice telling us, from the title on, truths as basic and vital as These Things Will Never Happen Quite Like That Again.”
—Michael Ventura, author of The Zoo Where You're Fed to God
“...Biographically naked and humane — not a tell-all aesthetic, but a practice of the self’s spiritual stripping...”
“...an invigorating addition to the canon-yet-to-be of West Coast poets that has been shaped by Eloise Klein Healy, Sharon Doubiago, Judy Grahn and Philip Whalen...”
“...you’ll want to witness their reinvention of memory peal and risk-defying consciousness..."
“...Biographically naked and humane — not a tell-all aesthetic, but a practice of the self’s spiritual stripping...” “...an invigorating addition to the canon-yet-to-be of West Coast poets that has been shaped by Eloise Klein Healy, Sharon Doubiago, Judy Grahn and Philip Whalen...” “...you’ll want to witness their reinvention of memory peal and risk-defying consciousness..."
Praise for sounds in my möbius mind
First Matter Press, 2018
“Biographically naked and humane, Ash Good neutrally observes the rough edges of life with family and lovers/friends that the less attentive and grounded writer might think should be polished or even concealed. Touring the everyday with attention that makes events much more than ordinary, she generously layers physical observation and direct expression in a way that feels intimate. You realize this is not a tell-all aesthetic, but a practice of the self’s spiritual stripping. In her relationship to the landscape, particularly the landscape of America where mobility and ‘freedom’ are prized, and in the way that movement represents spiritual searching, you feel her connection to the Beats, and her clean language finds you thinking, ‘if Gary Snyder had been a girl…’ For Ash Good a shamanic-led northwestern vision quest fills in for the zendos of Kyoto—a journey full of unexpected events and tendernesses.”
—Karen Kevorkian, author of Lizard Dream & White Stucco Black Wing
“Each poet’s journey entails risks that a reader is spared. With an abundance of selfless generosity, Ash Good lets us savor her hard-won knowledge, etched in succinct rhythms and luscious detail. Her poems constitute an invigorating addition to the canon-yet-to-be of West Coast poets that has been shaped by Eloise Klein Healy, Sharon Doubiago, Judy Grahn and Philip Whalen. She is well on her way to joining these comrades with poems that joyfully offer you the pleasure of their company.”
—Bill Mohr, author of Hidden Proofs & Vehemence