Contributor’s Marginalia: Jane Zwart responding to Derek N. Otsuji’s “Small Lives”
When I find a poem I love, sometimes I will write it out by hand as a way to get to know it better. But I wanted to make myself a student of Derek N. Otsuji’s “Small Lives,” so I also spent some time making notes about how it works, how it means.
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Poetry Review (UK), and TriQuarterly, as well as other journals and magazines. She also writes book reviews–most recently for Plume and Tupelo Quarterly–and has published edited versions of on-stage interviews with writers including Christian Wiman, Amit Majmudar, and Zadie Smith.