FLP BOOK OF THE DAY: A Moth Collection by Anna Ojascastro Guzon

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The poems of A Moth Collection converse with Charles Darwin, Tina Turner, Sylvia Plath, Sacagawea, Walt Whitman, Kendrick Lamar, and the author’s family members who survived World War II in the Philippines. What does it mean to survive? What does it mean to die? What makes us human? What makes us just another animal? Ojascastro Guzon explores the biological sciences, pop culture, current events, religion, her family’s generational history, and personal experiences with #death, #rebirth, #survival, #motherhood, #marriage, the practice of medicine, education, and being a first generation Filipino American in attempts to answer these questions. #poetry #FilipinoAmerican

Anna Ojascastro Guzon is a writer, mother, teacher, former physician, and co-founder of YourWords STL, an arts and education nonprofit. She received an MD from the University of Missouri – Kansas City School of Medicine and an MFA from The New School Graduate Writing Program. One may find her writing in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Best American Poetry Blog, Bone Bouquet, The Boiler Journal, and Bellingham Review among other publications.

PRAISE FOR A Moth Collection by Anna Ojascastro Guzon

It’s a pleasure to quote, and to praise, “A Moth Collection.” Few first books of poetry are as easy to like. The variety is striking; Guzon offers us succinct prose poems, a pair of sestinas, skinny poems, an ode to forbidden fantasies, and a poem composed entirely of accusatory questions. The attractive and refreshingly modest speaker trusts God, is susceptible to the “draw of pyrrhic applause,” and has the wit to title a poem “She Changed Her Name to Judy.” I love the first stanza of “How to Live Large: A Debate”: “She said she’d take Ella’s voice / The pixie frame of that Broadway dancer / Maybe the anatomy of Heidi Klum / And Frank O’Hara’s charisma / She’d be a poet. And live in New York City / She’d be a flirt. She’d be young.” Guzon defines herself beautifully when she addresses the good gray poet by name: “I’m no genius, Mr. Whitman. I’m just often alone until you and everyone’s aloneness wraps an arm around my waist and I don’t mind.”

–David Lehman, Editor, The Oxford Book of American Poetry Series Editor, The Best American Poetry, Editor-in-Chief, BAP blog Anna Ojascastro Guzon

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