You Do Not Have To Be Good

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Chosen for the 2019 Trio House Open Reading Selection: </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>You Do Not Have To Be Good</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> by Madeleine Barnes utilizes powerful lyricism to illuminate the soul's perseverance to live. Barnes intimately immerses us in what it means to be chronically ill and reflects on the body's connection to the planet. While the body succumbs to illness Barnes expresses illness that tides silence everything / fell apart in my mouth in piles of razors / that severed language my only tether to Earth. </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>You Do Not Have To Be Good</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> guides us through the ways modern medicine attempts to heal the body as the poet bravely confides in her reader that she searches for solace in poetry's galaxy. </span></p>