Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s The New Economy, published by Copper Canyon Press in October 2025, is a portal of hauntings and extraordinary song, summoning readers to have courage amidst their own sorrows. Calvocoressi honors the magic and sacredness of an ungendered body, sustaining a devotional poetic voice throughout these investigative, unafraid, and sincere poems. They masterfully make space for both longing and self-acceptance, the fear and the light within us all, conjuring a deeply personal collection that is timelessly urgent.
Survival is at the core of The New Economy, and while such a theme comes with weight, Calvocoressi kindly offers poems of relief, rare imaginings of a safe world. A standout in the collection, “An Inn for the Coven,” describes an idyllic dreamscape where all are welcome. In center justified lines, Calvocoressi writes:
Witch hazel going wild along the
walkway. And all the spots to sit and
read our spell books. And all the
ways to keep the out.
…
All our children and all
our children. Welcome. Water
running in the brook. Clean enough
to drink from our hands.
All that is evil cannot touch this scene of convalescence and thriving; Calvocoressi uses caesura in their denial of what causes harm, even a place on the page. The wicked can be systemic violence like genocide, a microaggression against an individual, or anything in between. “An Inn for the Coven” is in conversation with anyone who dreams, anyone who might be tired or worn down but still has hope. Young people are at the heart of this poem, alongside clean water; both nourish the future of peace that so many strive for, either under the leadership of dedicated activists making large-scale change or with determined love in their hearts to get through each day.
When first reading this poem two years ago as part of Ada Limón’s You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World anthology (Milkweed, 2024), I was so struck by how simple and radical it is in its imagining. I deeply wanted to be in the coven. A second layer of meaning surfaced as I read “An Inn for the Coven” now, within The New Economy: I cannot simply be in the coven and relax my shoulders. I must nurture it so that others can join and that it can be sustainable, too. I have what it takes to do so, I only needed this reminder. Calvocoressi affirms that there is magic, power, and light within us all; the inn is waiting, is possible.
A few pages forward, the title phrase “new economy” appears in “No Poems Today,” one of many poems within the collection that reflect on productivity and a poet’s responsibility to write. Calvocoressi reminds that to ‘write every day’ is not always possible, especially for folks targeted by systemic violence or humans that don’t function best on able bodies’ clocks. Chronic illness, cancer, and other health issues are often so difficult to write about because there is no neat, bow-tie ending. While each day brings new challenges, Calvocoressi decides to live on and to write when desired. As a cancer survivor myself, I was warmed upon reaching Calvocoressi’s opening lines (with lead-in title): “No Poems Today // Because you’re here. There’s warm / bread to be eaten. With cheese and jam. / Small shops to walk into and look around / just for the pleasure of looking with you.” When faced with mortality, we live for connection to loved ones. And while it is true that poetry is essential, urgent, and a source of truth for many writers and readers alike, ultimately it is people who we cherish. “No Poems Today” ends by sustaining the hopefulness found earlier in A New Economy, naming a way of imagining a world outside of the current one:
Let’s be here for the bounty. I can
still imagine years of possibility
ahead of us. A place with just a little
more space for us to stretch out.
A new economy and, yes, I know
I can’t drive at night. But who needs
to go anywhere in the future. Maybe
friends will come over. Imagine how
nice to hear nothing but the stars.
The implication is that the current economy keeps people in a scarcity mindset—we are made to think that we don’t have enough and that there is no escape from capitalism. We are inundated with messages to buy more and keep working for pennies, that only then will we be happy. Calvocoressi here reminds us readers that there is another way.
This social shift stems from honoring the light body, a consistent image throughout The New Economy: “All our light bodies came to the party / gleaming. We let down our furs and suits / of armor. We glistened. Glistened / …Our brightness lit the river / landing. Not a single light was needed / in the houses. We were the light.” Lines like these showcase the masking that every day requires, and how underneath we all carry within, or in fact most truly are, starlight. The light body is an essence, a beauty and a power.
The poem “Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu that we love.” features the light body again and is connected to a scattered series of poems that start with the same two words. The speaker is open with their longing right from the start. And while they get swept up mid-poem, or should I say mid-message, in conjuring memories of past meals, the laughter, chilies, and “those cold yam noodles that you / like,” the speaker returns to the simple, vulnerable reality of missing a loved one:
…You can come in your light
body or skeleton or be invisible I don’t even
care. Know you have a long way to travel.
Know I don’t even know whether it’s long
at all. Wish you could tell me. What
you’re reading. If you’re reading.
Miss you. I’m at the table in the back.
Once again, Calvocoressi redefines what it means to live—to be a person, a poet, someone with family and community and friends. Knowing someone else is one of the most intimate experiences we, as light bodies, can have. This idea coincides with embodied phrases in English like ‘I see you’ and ‘I hear you.’ The fragmented sentences, however, evoke the disconnect and distance between the speaker and the subject. When someone is gone, in any manner, the person left grieving in many ways will always choose waiting like Calvocoressi’s speaker here. In one way or another, there is hope of reunion and embrace.
The New Economy is inventive, candid, and transformative. The speaker in many of these poems is going through the season of Lent, a forty day period in which Christians repent their sins to honor the span during which Jesus resisted Satan’s temptation in the desert. I myself was raised Catholic, and recall how on Ash Wednesday, a priest would remind me that I came from dust and will only become dust. A section of the collection, “Lent Cisterns: Could I Ever Write a Poem Again After These Years of Bleeding These Years of Mourning?”, features blossoms of poems, variations Calvocoressi’s speaker confesses that they tried each day of Lent as acts of resistance against self-hatred. This diligence comes at the flux of survival mode and thriving. Calvocoressi’s message is valuable for any contemporary reader, that an insistence on living amidst it all by honoring what is innate and sacred within is a radical act, and oh, so worth it.
***