D.W. Baker
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lowermelody.bsky.social
D.W. Baker
@lowermelody.bsky.social
870 followers 1.1K following 400 posts
submerging poet, dad, editor ~ place, bodies, belonging, the end of the world ~ edits for @LibreLit.bsky.social reads for @VariantLit.bsky.social @PhillyChapbook.bsky.social @CosmicDaffodil.bsky.social ~ he/him ~
🪐💀🏳️‍🌈🍃 https://www.dwbakerpoetry.com
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lowermelody.bsky.social
D.W. Baker @lowermelody.bsky.social · Nov 13
Greetings bluesky; I am a poet who plays with form, sound, image, and shape

Here is a favorite piece published last year in @feralpoetryandart.bsky.social, "Would a fourth brain make humans less cruel?"

it arranges three microsonnets into a contrapuntal structure:

feralpoetry.net/would-a-four...
Would a fourth brain make humans less cruel? paleo- neo- reptilian mammalian mammalian light pleasant power grid dark crestfall sneak attack blood painful decimate spark craving prostitute taste savor recipe run frighten messaging heat fuming fascism sun brighten resolute freeze heartstop terrorist mate lovemark partnering bite hunger dominate wait boredom drug abuse more crushing stratify more mortal moralize
Reposted by D.W. Baker
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Robert Creeley
THEY I wondered what had happened to the chords. There was a music, they were following a pattern. It was an intention perhaps. No field but they walk m in it. No place without them, any discretion is useless. They want a time, they have a time, each one in his place, an endless arrival.
November 7, 2025 at 2:04 AM
Reposted by D.W. Baker
tinywrenlit.bsky.social
Wrenster Eric Hadley's tiny chap "Misunderstanding Silence" is now in the tiny wren shop: www.tinywrenlit.com/product-page...
Misunderstanding Silence (Eric Hadley) | Tiny Wren Lit
In the poet's words, "Like all poems, Misunderstanding Silence is about death always and birds sometimes.
www.tinywrenlit.com
November 6, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Reposted by D.W. Baker
phillychapbook.bsky.social
“Settling on the mirror form opened the way into the parallels between the original image of the egrets, their reflection, and their ambiguous relationship and the shifting, even reversing, roles of an adult daughter and her aging mother…” #writingcommunity
phillychapbookreview.org/chapbook-poe...
Chapbook Poem: Two egrets at the edge of a tidal marsh by Rebekah Wolman
Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for November 2025, "Two egrets at the edge of a tidal marsh" from What the Hollow Held, along with a few words from the poet.
phillychapbookreview.org
November 5, 2025 at 8:50 PM
lowermelody.bsky.social
Currently reading/reviewing: LILACS by Rainer Diana Hamilton, an experimental collection of lilacs or "trance essays" engaging with sensory experience and embodied memory

www.krupskayabooks.com/catalog/p/ra...
The cover of Lilacs by Rainer Diana Hamilton
November 5, 2025 at 11:11 PM
lowermelody.bsky.social
from THE UNWORTHY by Agustina Bazterrica, reviewed by Savannah Brooks in @forkapplepress.bsky.social

forkapplepress.com/thejuice/the...
I found a box of mobile phones that were turned off. My mother had told me about them, from when there was internet, she’d said. When the world still believed the internet was going to last forever. Now the phones are worthless. Black screens and silence. That’s what Mom had said, black screens and silence, and she’d showed me her useless mobile, told me what the world had been like before, how people had done everything on those screens, how they believed that in some countries the electricity had been cut because of artificial intelligence, to prevent its advance, the spread of its power, its independence and hunger to dominate its creator. How after the final blackout the world did not recover, rebuild, restart, because nature finished things off with a new degree of devastation.
November 1, 2025 at 2:57 PM
lowermelody.bsky.social
finally placed a long form review of APOCALYPSE DANCE (Wipf & Stock: 2025) by Ethan McGuire! Coming soon to Radix Magazine
the cover of APOCALYPSE DANCE by Ethan McGuire, featuring a black-and-white line drawing of a skeleton and several human soldiers fighting on horseback
October 27, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Reposted by D.W. Baker
variantlit.bsky.social
Hey are you busy today? (Don't worry, this isn't a creepy vague text received on a Sunday morning, just a reminder that we're open in all categories!)

variantlit.com/submit/
Screen shot of Variant Literature's submissions page: open in all categories.
October 26, 2025 at 6:24 PM
lowermelody.bsky.social
excerpt from "Birding Through the Aftermath" by Katelyn Sweeney
What taxonomy of grief includes this? That brown flutter between dead branches finch? Maybe he says some part of me listening despite myself
October 25, 2025 at 1:08 AM
Reposted by D.W. Baker
phillychapbook.bsky.social
New #poetry #books from Milk & Cake Press, University of Chicago Press, Belle Point Press, Zephyr Press, @lsupress.bsky.social, Princeton University Press, Omnidawn, @upittpress.bsky.social, University Of Iowa Press & more. #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity phillychapbookreview.org/new-poetry-t...
New Poetry Titles (10/21/25)
Check out new poetry books for the week of 10/25 from Milk & Cake Press, University of Chicago Press, Belle Point Press, Thirty West Publishing House, Zephyr Press, LSU Press, Lookout Books, Princeton...
phillychapbookreview.org
October 21, 2025 at 6:39 PM
Reposted by D.W. Baker
bruisermag.com
I grind the body of Christ into dust beneath my ass.
I can do nothing wrong.

PATRIOT & HOLY SONNET, two new poems from Olivia Braley

www.bruisermag.com/braley_twopo...
October 20, 2025 at 4:05 PM
lowermelody.bsky.social
Mail day! it's the new @evaalterpoet.bsky.social from Eulogy Press
The cover of AUTOCARTOGRAPHIES by Eva Alter
October 19, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by D.W. Baker
lrbpoetry.bsky.social
Review of my chapbook Free Bleeding (dogleech books, '25) by D.W. Baker is up now at Vagabond City Lit - analyzing the book's voice, techniques, approach, and thematic exploration.

Getting the full literary analysis treatment from @lowermelody.bsky.social is a dream, so check it out!
October 18, 2025 at 4:29 PM
lowermelody.bsky.social
i wish i could block WILDsound Writing Festival (everyone wins) on submittable
October 18, 2025 at 1:23 AM
lowermelody.bsky.social
Up now at Vagabond City Lit is my review of FREE BLEEDING (dogleech books: 2025) by @lrbpoetry.bsky.social, a process-based manuscript that explores embodied states, in the stylistic tradition of lucille clifton

vagabondcitylit.com/2025/07/21/i...
In Review: Free Bleeding by Lydia Rae Bush
In the final stanzas of “Sanity,” poet Lydia Rae Bush defines her body’s position on the margins via contrast with “the center, / where I cannot stay or even land.” Unlike the poem’s second-person …
vagabondcitylit.com
October 17, 2025 at 7:28 PM
lowermelody.bsky.social
www.sciencealert.com/misophonia-l...
These findings highlight just how complex our experiences with sound can be. Hearing really is much more than just the ear doing its job. More severe misophonia may be linked to less mental flexibility around emotional situations and a stronger habit of negative thinking.
October 17, 2025 at 12:23 AM
Reposted by D.W. Baker
variantlit.bsky.social
Guess what? We're opening for poetry and prose submissions later this month! Official date coming soon!
Variant Lit logo in black and white with text: "Get ready! We're opening for poetry and prose this month!"
October 10, 2025 at 1:32 AM
lowermelody.bsky.social
New review up at @variantlit.bsky.social! On OUR HUMAN SHORES by @burrowtongue.bsky.social (@blackoceanbooks.bsky.social), a "sprawling, kaleidoscopic mass of untitled poems" which "offers hope in ... human agency, despite the waves of damage now impacting our shared material realities."
Residuum and Reclamation: On Our Human Shores by Josh Fomon
Our Human Shores (Black Ocean: 2025) is a dense yet lyrical examination of the limits and imperatives of human agency during the anthropocene. The book’s sprawling, kaleidoscopic mass of untitled p…
variantlit.com
October 12, 2025 at 11:44 AM
lowermelody.bsky.social
huge thanks to @genrepunkmag.bsky.social for nominating this poem, "air," co-authored with @gr8earlofhell.bsky.social as part of a series, for the Pushcart prize. 🌬

genrepunkmag.wordpress.com/2025/08/20/a...
air after midnight now & i am instituting the freight train over lombard street shut the fuck up challenge & it's not an attack on trains but actually in defense of a silent night, soundtracked only by tires across slick pavement & an errant thrush. it's been months since i heard a whistle sound through the stark chill of midnight air & i swear this tree had leaves the last time i looked but here we are now, in the waxing-days of january staring at pockets of orangegrey between shadows of branches. i will always bemoan july's humid advances but never stop to consider the right now of it all—the way chills lurch up unsuspecting spine, regardless of the weight of my jacket. the black-iced patches of uneven brick sidewalk. the way a sound, any sound, cuts the sky in the first hours of a new year, ecstatic at all the streets it may roam unencumbered. i keep a stock of blades to cut the sky beneath my tongue / shaped like every sound that was rejected by my kin
October 10, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by D.W. Baker
phillychapbook.bsky.social
"It seems such a shame that a beautiful location is just gathering dust and overgrowth, and I wanted to lean into the juxtaposition of that." Read three #poems by Bryana Fern along with a few words about "Women on the Wall." #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity phillychapbookreview.org/three-poems-...
Three Poems by Bryana Fern
Read three poems by Bryana Fern, our first biweekly poet of the Fall 2025 issue, along with a few words about "Women on the Wall."
phillychapbookreview.org
October 9, 2025 at 5:25 PM
lowermelody.bsky.social
couldn't be happier to see this poem land in @bruisermag.com, a venue i admire for their commitment to a unique vision
bruisermag.com BRUISER @bruisermag.com · Oct 8
More like a flower than a gun

WITH EACH BITE MORE MAD by @lowermelody.bsky.social

www.bruisermag.com/baker_bite
October 8, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Reposted by D.W. Baker
phillychapbook.bsky.social
New #poetry #books from @lsupress.bsky.social, @deepvellumbooks.bsky.social, @upittpress.bsky.social, Persea, @aaknopf.bsky.social, W. W. Norton, CavanKerry Press, University of Chicago Press & @graywolfpress.bsky.social. #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity phillychapbookreview.org/new-poetry-t...
New Poetry Titles (10/7/25)
Check out new poetry books for the week of 10/7 from White Pine Press, Buckrider Books, Black Ocean, World Poetry, LSU Press, Deep Vellum Publishing, Assembly Press, University of Pittsburgh Press, Sa...
phillychapbookreview.org
October 7, 2025 at 8:00 PM
lowermelody.bsky.social
"We’re in an era where we don’t have to construct thought experiments to see what a dark future might look like, because these days it feels the end of world as we know it is looming over us ... it can make writing a near-future dystopian a tricky endeavor"

lithub.com/its-okay-but...
“It’s Okay But It’s Also Really Not.” When Dystopian Fiction is No Longer a Thought Experiment
Dystopian fiction is getting real, and I’m here for it. I don’t think I’m the only one. There’s something cathartic about reading about the end of the world. As a science fiction reader and avid fa…
lithub.com
October 7, 2025 at 8:42 PM
lowermelody.bsky.social
New prose / poetry combo out in the Autumn 2025 issue of @version9magazine.bsky.social! An essay-in-halves, "Sonic Pressure and The Lexical Poem," plus a suite of four microsonnets, including this previously unpublished one, "microsonnet of climate crisis terms"

version9magazine.com
Microsonnet of climate crisis terms climate feedback aerosols atmospheric glacier loss climate forcing entropy carbon footprint refugees dryland farming hydrologic aquifer hydrocarbon biogenic hydrosphere
September 29, 2025 at 10:47 PM
lowermelody.bsky.social
futurism.com/future-socie...
A recent preliminary survey of AI-related psychiatric impacts by social work researcher Keith Robert Head points to a coming society-wide crisis brought on by “unprecedented mental health challenges that mental health professionals are ill-equipped to address.” “We are witnessing the emergence of an entirely new frontier of mental health crises as AI chatbot interactions begin producing increasingly documented cases of suicide, self-harm, and severe psychological deterioration that were previously unprecedented in the internet age,” Head writes.
September 27, 2025 at 1:28 AM
lowermelody.bsky.social
I'm honored to have this collage, "Matrilineal," published by @turningleafjournal.bsky.social and brilliantly paired with a poem titled "SELFISH GIRL" by Suze Kay, nominated for Best of the Net. So is the poem! See more at turningleafjournal.com/2025/06/01/s...
a collage using photorealistic elements to depict a child with flowers for a head, walking towards an adult female figure with a lightbulb for a head, in an environment with both natural (colores) and built (black & white) elements
September 25, 2025 at 7:30 PM