Brittany Rogers sharpens her pen, steps out with ‘Good Dress’
In her debut poetry collection, Good Dress, Brittany Rogers displays a masterful economy of language, able to capture complex generational relationship dynamics in just a few keyboard strokes. In recalling her father, for one, Rogers writes, “I have never liked being pushed; he has never enjoyed being refused,” and these dozen words somehow contain volumes about the pair’s complex history.
“I always joke and say that I’m a much stronger editor than I am a writer,” said Rogers, who will appear in conversation with Hanif Abdurraqib at Urban Arts Space on Friday, Dec. 6. “I used to write really long, really, really wordy poems. And now when I get things down on the page, I’m confident I can figure out what needs to stay there. … It’s about the cleanness of the line, and making sure each word in the poem has a function.”