Rachael Guynn Wilson’s new chapbook, a finalist for the 2025 NMP/DIAGRAM Chapbook Contest, The Karen Horney Progressions, print copy + included PDF.
PREORDER (chapbook ships 3/10/26).
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I find myself reminded, reading these poems, of Miles Davis, his minimalism and sure excellence (I once saw Miles play in Jerusalem, at the Sultan’s Pool, 1987)—but that sounds too hyperbolic, even for a blurb —SPARROW
Sharp writing that is both moving and delightfully lowbrow. Wilson’s poems are hilarious like an inside joke: you can’t stop laughing and you can’t explain why. —ALEXANDRA EGAN
The Karen Horney Progressions is an irresistible comic meditation on the disaster of embodiment. Rendered with delightful formal invention and in a restrained American vernacular, these poems of the barely there play themselves out to hilarious and moving effects. Wilson’s Karen Horney is a heroine for our times: a Sisyphus on no particular mission who nevertheless finds herself the butt of an unstated metaphysical joke, perhaps the joke of human life itself. —JAMES LOOP
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Here’s a sample for you:
Karen Horney
I once met a woman who’d been
run over by a truck.
Ok, a cement mixer.
Leg like a pancake.
Was her name Karen Horney?
I don’t think so.
Karen Horney
I once met a girl who’d been
struck by a truck.
I mean, a woman.
I mean, a cement mixer.
Name was Karen Horney.
Or was it.
Karen Horney
I’ll tell you a story
about Karen Horney
and now my story’s begun.
She got run over
by a steamroller,
and now my story is done.
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$10 + $5 shipping (US orders; email us for a quote if you’re overseas) for print + PDF!
