The Friend is a poet who lives in Brooklyn, New York and teaches poetry at Rutgers University. Their books include The Late Parade and George Washington as well as the chapbook Poems for Silence. You can follow them at @apoetsnotebook on Substack.

In the late spring of 2022—a miracle year—I picked up the Talisman House edition of Alice Notley’s Selected Poems and read “Homer’s Art.” I jolted in astonishment. Here was a prose poem that wasn’t just poem but manifesto. A grand theory of literature, gender, history.