Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal and The Writer’s Center present a FREE virtual chat about the craft of poetry! We’re joined by Dora Malech to discuss her latest collection, Trying x Trying. Dora is in conversation with Brandon Johnson, poet and Events Manager of The Writer’s Center.

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Dora Malech‘s newest book of poetry is Trying × Trying, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2025. Previous books of poetry include Flourish, Stet, Say So, and Shore Ordered Ocean; her poems have appeared in publications that include The New Yorker and Best American Poetry. She is coeditor of The American Sonnet: An Anthology of Poems and Essays, cotranslator of Dolore Minimo by Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto, and recipient of honors that include an Amy Clampitt Residency Award, a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, a Mary Sawyers Baker Prize, and a Writing Residency Fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She is a professor at Johns Hopkins University, where she is chair of the Writing Seminars and editor in chief of The Hopkins Review.

About the Book

Poetry that wrestles with language, loss, and resilience in times of crisis.

In Trying × Trying, Dora Malech dissects the language of our times; she turns over the familiar phrases of politics, parenthood, and pandemic to reveal what lies beneath. Through playing with the double meaning of “trying” as both perseverance and reproductive struggle, these poems navigate public and private spheres and interrogate the words we use to make sense of uncertainty and belief.

With sharp lyricism and restless energy, Malech transforms language into prayer and protest. Sound bends, meanings shift, and repetition becomes a revelation as she traces the tensions between individual and collective experience. Trying × Trying is an enlightening meditation on persistence, reminding us that even in fractured times, poetry finds a way forward.

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