Highlighting the daily realities of identity amidst intersections, Alex Wells Shapiro's Insect Architecture examines the environments - urban, built, literary, implied, or denied - where the poet might find a place to thrive as a mixed-race person. This debut collection boldly takes on pressing social issues, advocating for the hope promised by density, whether of population or poetic construction. In doing so, Shapiro complicates the boundaries between personal spaces, between individuals and communities. It is within such density - by literal abutments, inside walls, along train tracks, across intersections - that Shapiro finds his place, one that (re)centers the borders, edges, and margins to which so many are now pushed.
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