The American Wing
by Carlie Hoffman and Tiffany Troy
Editor’s note:
We are pleased to present The American Wing, a collection of poetry selected by Carlie Hoffman and Tiffany Troy, the 2025–26 MPAC Poetry Curators-in-Residence. At this critical juncture, when so much of what America stands for – both as a nation and as a concept – is under duress, we feel the urgency to acknowledge America’s diverse cultural, linguistic, and expressive traditions that carve out spaces for radical reclamation and honest exchange. Our world is in crisis. Let the arts guide the language for both its deconstruction and its eventual renewal.
Each week, we’ll feature work from a different poet accompanied by a brief conversation or a short reflection from the poets and the curators. The American Wing commences on April 16, inviting you to engage with these powerful voices one movement at a time.
The American Wing
Curatorial Statement
The American Wing explores the question, What is American poetry? through the lens of translation, (neo)formal innovation, and multimodal practice. The collection highlights how the poetry of place by contemporary American poets, paradoxically, is shaped by movement—of people, languages, and ideas—and resists a single, fixed definition. In curating this collection, we are interested in foregrounding poets (both well-known and emerging) whose poetry and poetics give shape to the continued development of the evolving canon, reflecting its rich and prismatic tapestry, even while challenging past and current injustices towards marginalized groups. Featuring works in translation, multilingual texts, pieces that are inspired by and incorporate mixed media, and hybrid or inventive structures, the collection foregrounds the ways American poets negotiate identity, culture, and form across linguistic and artistic borders. In doing so, The American Wing positions translation, innovation, and hybridity not as peripheral, but as central to understanding the rich, polyglot, and ever-evolving landscape of American poetry.
Index
Cynthia Cruz – Conversation & Three Poems
Adrian Matejka – Conversation & Three Poems
Sean Singer – Conversation & Two Poems
Naoko Fujimoto – Conversation & A Poem
Ariel Francisco – Conversation & Three Poems, and the Poetry of Jacques Viau Renaud in Translation
Edward Hirsch – Conversation & Three Poems
This collection is curated by Carlie Hoffman and Tiffany Troy
Carlie Hoffman is the author of three poetry collections, including One More World Like This World (Four Way Books, 2025) and When There Was Light (Four Way Books, 2023), winner of the National Jewish Book Award. She is the founding editor and editorial director of Orange Editions, and the editor-in-chief of Small Orange Journal.
Tiffany Troy is the author of Dominus (BlazeVOX [books]). She is Managing Editor at Tupelo Quarterly, Associate Editor of Tupelo Press, Book Review Co-Editor at The Los Angeles Review, and Co-Editor of Matter.
