Goatsong by Phoebe Giannisi, trans. Brian Sneeden
Poetry Book Society Translation Choice Winter 2025 illness Bolivia and El Salvador

Bolivia and El Salvador

and infinite

The story then follows the private lives of townspeople encircled by public violence: a newly married couple

Carl Phillips's Scattered Snows

to the conundrum of being a woman…in keeping with what I think we mean when we say "women’s writing"

Goatsong by Phoebe Giannisi, trans. Brian Sneeden<br><b>Poetry Book Society Translation Choice Winter 2025</b> illness Bolivia and El SalvadorPublished 6th November 2025. The ancient Greek word for tragedy () is a compound of goat () and song ( ). In Phoebe Giannisi's Goatsong, the seam that connects human and animal, myths and history, is the body. In Giannisis language, life obeys myth. A man places a screaming cicada in his mouth, reminding us of a scene from Platos Phaedrus, where Socrates claims cicadas to have been humans who became entranced by the invention of singing, and didnt