The New Economy

by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

*2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Finalist*


The New Economy memorializes the world’s pleasures and perils told through the point of view of an aging, ungendered body.


A devotional to the ungendered vessel as it ages, dreams, and survives. A practice of radical collaboration, failure, and renewal. A world of “Miss You” poems opening a portal to all those we’ve lost and would love to visit for a while. In Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s latest collection, The New Economy, poems are haunted by the ghosts of loved ones and childhood memories, by changing landscapes and bodies. Calvocoressi’s own figure is examined—investigating the desire to protect the body one is born with and the longing to have been born in another. Cisterns sing with the musicality of a poet who understands both the power of sound and silence—those quiet spaces inviting us to consider the words we cannot hear. “The days I don’t kill myself are extraordinary” one poems says. “Why don’t we have a name for it?” Lyrical and unafraid, The New Economy invites us to name our fears and sorrows, to write to who or what has left us, to create practices that can hold both the darkness and light of this (in)finite life.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer, Adult, Book Club

135 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 14, 2025

About the author

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart and Apocalyptic Swing. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers, the Bernard F. Conners Prize from the Paris Review, and the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. She is Editor at Large for Los Angeles Review of Books and Assistant Professor and Walker Percy Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reviews

[Lauren M · Rating 5 out of 5]

if an alien came to earth and asked what it feels like to be human I might give them this book

[Caitlin Conlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s hard to even write a review for this book, it is THAT exquisite. All I’ll say is that this is my favorite poetry collection I’ve read in a long time. Wow. Calvocoressi has outdone themself.

[Sam Beal · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterclass in being small and significant and flawed and human. I believe this will be one of the most influential poetry collections of the decade.

[Dana DesJardins · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, every poem is a knock-out. I read one aloud to our poetry group and everyone was floored. Just what we need in these dark days: honest and defiantly loving.
--

[max theodore · Rating 5 out of 5]

longer more detailed review to come but it's awesome how many of these poems feel like getting shot in the face

-->

Once I saw a fox leap inside the morning

light and made the same shape
of myself. Once I watched the boats
and also rocked back and forth.

How does every person not cry out
all the time?

i didn't know it when i picked this up, but i was actually familiar with gabrielle calvocoressi already. you are, too, if you're in the same tumblr circles i am: the days i don't want to kill myself are extraordinary. deep bass ...

but i picked it up because my professor put some poetry awards ceremony thing on class last semester and i saw/heard calvocoressi read "Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.," and i felt like i was sincerely going to die, and i still can't read that poem or even really think about it without tearing up.

like an empty opera house inside me.
Like all the chandeliers just shattered
on the floor. I figured I'd just speak plainly.
It's time to dress for fall.

this is a collection with its own language, a vocabulary of cisterns and light bodies and skin sacks, and at first it seems like a conversation the artist is having with themself. (the structure adds to this: the latter half of the book is a poem-a-day challenge the author gave themself during lent, an attempt to return to writing.) but it doesn't really matter what a cistern is, actually, because i feel like this kind of carved me open and/or shelled me like a peanut? i went from "some of these poems are really good and some of them do nothing for me" to "wait, okay, this is quite good" to "this is maybe one of my favorite poetry collections, ever" to buying a hardcover copy because it was what the bookstore had, even though i am broke. it is a collection about grief and love and bodies and the horror of living in the american empire and gender dysphoria and gender at large and violence and pain and looking out the window and seeing the flowers. i am no kind of poetry expert, and i cannot define what makes "good" poetry. but i know some of it is this.

whatever is waiting for me
will have to wait a little longer.

favorite poems besides the aforementioned: "karma affirmation cistern don't be afraid keep going toward the horror," "bringing the bees," "did you hear the news out of tennessee out of north carolina out of," "44. every day but sunday"

Every day I wake up with my good fortune
and news of my demise. Don't keep it from me.
Why don't we have a name for it?
Bring the bass back. Bring the band out on the stoop.
Hallelujah!

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hellllll yes

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

exclusively read in my childhood bedroom before going to sleep the week of christmas. really excellent stuff. my favorites are:

Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu that we love.
Stacking Cistern My Bones on Top of Your Bones on Top of Your Bones
An Inn for the Coven
No Poems Today
Every Day But Sunday (46)

[Sam Cheng · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not normally a poems girlie, but Abdurraqib put me on Calvocoressi, and this collection frightened me. I suspect low-brow-me remains one who cannot regularly ingest and appreciate poetry; rather, it is Calvocoressi and their 10-year-project with which I uniquely connected. The author’s use of cisterns immediately grabbed me, and they focus on embodiment (e.g., skin, flesh, gender, bleeding), identity, grandparents, passed on friends, the South, and loneliness. The timing also led to some of my undoing as Calvocoressi writes on Ash Wednesday and Lent.

These sections from three poems stand out.

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.

“…Know I told you
It was okay to go. Know I told you it was okay
to leave me. Why’d you believe me?
You always believed me. Wish you would
come back so we could talk about truth.
Miss you. Wish you would walk through my
door. Stare out from the mirror. Come through
the pipes.”

Mayflower Cistern I Feel My Pilgrim Worry

“Whatever does not welcome
me I tear asunder. Whatever
welcomes me was mine to
sack and bring to my knees.
I give the gift of my hunger
to everyone. And then
I build a fence.”

“What brought me the most pleasure today?”

“I’m trying to do these little variations.
The small poems that maybe could
bloom out to something. Each one on a
different day of Lent. A different part of
the journey. Someone said, But that’s not
giving something up. I don’t know. I think
the act of just making something each
day is giving up self-hatred. Giving up
the loathing that says I can’t make any-
thing anymore. It’s almost spring, isn’t it?
Cherry blossom, drifting on the koi pond.
The cat’s fur warming. This cup of tea
waiting as I work.”

I may purchase a copy, which would be a first.

[Olivia Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gabby effortlessly holds hands with despair and joy throughout this entire collection, and it truly took my breath away. I still don’t really know what a cistern is, but Hammond B-3 Organ Cistern??? WOW. Gabby, you’re my hero!!!!!!

[emmmma berverrr · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the most important books to me <3 so many of these poems I have loved for a long time. Reading it truly inspires me to be as earnest and daring and direct in my own poems as Calvocoressi is in this collection.

In one poem, they mention giving a lecture on Mary Oliver and queerness---an event I attended! Very silly to be reminded of it in this way and hear more of the backstory behind it.

[Elena Macdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gaby ROCKS. i will be encouraging everyone i know to read this. a new favorite

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

RTC.

[Spencer Reads Everything · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewing a collection of contemporary poetry is always a humbling exercise for me. I am not a specialist in poetry, and I am especially not an expert in the currents and conversations shaping modern American verse. That awareness inevitably shapes how I approach a book like The New Economy. I try to read carefully, attentively, and honestly, without pretending to mastery I do not possess.

What immediately stands out in this collection is its sustained engagement with value. The title is not metaphorical window dressing. Calvocoressi interrogates the concept of “economy” on multiple levels. There is the literal economy of labor, precarity, exchange, and survival in contemporary America. But there is also an emotional economy, a bodily economy, an economy of visibility and erasure. What is valued? Who is valued? What does it cost to exist in a body that is constantly being interpreted, categorized, and judged?

The poems are closely connected to identity, particularly queer identity and embodiment. They explore vulnerability and defiance, intimacy and performance, safety and exposure. At times I felt more like an observer than a participant in the experiences being articulated. Some poems emerge from spaces that are not my own lived reality. Yet I do not consider that a flaw. If anything, it is a reminder that reading poetry can be an act of listening rather than appropriation. Not every poem must be written for me in order for it to matter.

Stylistically, Calvocoressi shifts fluidly between conversational and lyrical modes. There is wit here, often sharp and dark. There is anger, but it is controlled rather than chaotic. There are moments of tenderness that interrupt the harsher meditations on value and survival. The poems do not resolve neatly, and they rarely offer thesis-driven clarity. Instead, they accumulate force through juxtaposition and tone.

If I have any hesitation, it is not about craft but about access. Contemporary poetry often resists easy entry, and this collection is no exception. There were poems I grasped immediately and others I felt I only partially understood. But that partial understanding is part of the genre’s texture. Poetry does not always aim for immediate transparency. Sometimes it aims for resonance.

And this collection does resonate.

Even when I could not fully inhabit every perspective, I could appreciate the intentionality of the language. There is care here. There is risk. There is a willingness to examine how systems shape interior life. That examination feels timely and urgent.

Ultimately, The New Economy is less about policy or capitalism in a technical sense and more about lived experience under systems of measurement. It asks what it costs to be visible. What it costs to love. What it costs to survive.

It is a thoughtful, challenging, and often striking collection.

For more of my thoughts, check out my video:
https://youtu.be/GA2LKx08z7c
For more reviews, check out my channel:
http://www.youtube.com/@SpencerReadsE...

[Eric Steere]

Reading this collection of poems was like accepting an invitation into the abundant inner world of a beautiful human being. Unguarded, unpretentious, and utterly sincere. I first came across this poet through a poem published in the New Yorker (still one of my favorites, (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...). One of my students, a young critical theorist himself, evidently came across this book in my office (he was probably attracted by the title) while on Doghouse (TJ's weekend version of detention), and left a post-it note on top: "%^&*ing brilliant way of opening a collection of poems." Indeed! The whole collection is wonderful, giving me the impression of profound connection to another human being.

[Dree · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a bit to get into the rhythm of this book, and to settle into the vocabulary. I enjoyed her vocabulary and how it connects the poems throughout the collection. Aging and health, nature, memories, grief is all here. Skinsuits change, miss you poems are grief on paper. These poems are dense, with figurative language needing time to figure out (at least for me). I read many of these poems twice. In the end I really liked this collection and am curious about her other work.

I especially liked Eleanor of Aquitaine--about bees, comparing the queen to Eleanor of Aquitaine.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe if you know your animal.
I mean really know your animal.
You won’t become a builder of factories
or slave ships. Maybe instead of building
a ship somewhere in your body
you just let yourself feel the pain and
humiliation. No need to make it beautiful
for some future reader. Just say how much
you wanted to hurt someone like you got hurt.
And then just watch that for a while. It’s okay
to feel horribly ashamed. Best not to look away.
The gate to joy is past the factory and past
the reader and maybe it’s past your last breath
on this planet. There’s nothing you can do about it.
You come from the cistern of brutality
and hunger. You are the resonator. Just breathe.

Excerpt from KARMA AFFIRMATION CISTERN DON’T BE AFRAID KEEP GOING TOWARD THE HORROR

There is so much in here that speaks of deep loss and deep recovery, and way of going through the world that can teach us all. I loved that they called their spirit “light body,” and it made me so happy to go through the world thinking of my light body driving the car, doing laundry, dealing with pain, you know, life. I am so happy this was a finalist for the National Book Award, so deserved, although they did not win. I liked her use of the word cistern for poem as a collection of words, of thoughts, of feelings, of meaning. There is so much we can learn from the ones that are marginalized, and this poet shows they are incandescently brighter than the ones who only know how to oppress.

(OF THE EYES) BE AFFECTED BY A BRIGHT LIGHT: 9:28 p.m.: too far gone even for autocorrect Nystagmus Variation
Oh little light body it’s fine.
It gets hard to see the flower of yourself
anymore. Let the horns bring you home.
Remember when the ground the trees
the waters that rushed past gleamed
with the music you made. No one
loved you then or if they did you
didn’t know it. But look at you then.
Put your mouth to the mouthpiece
of the world and ungold.

Excerpts:
AFFIRMATION CISTERN WHEN I LET GO OF MY FEAR MY LIFE BECOMES MAGICAL:
The trees and I open our mouths together and become a different kind of vessel. A lightship full of birdsong. On my back in the grass, floating. The trees show me their God face, which are more faces than I can count. I open all the holes in me so I become a saxophone or a viola da gamba. Whichever I feel. It’s good to open for the trees, who don’t force me. We make a loop of music and I let the river in as well. It’s almost too much but I can stop whenever I want to. That’s how kind the trees are. How respectful.

REAWAKENING CISTERN: RECOVERING THE GOLDEN THREAD:
Sometimes I get so deep inside the music I can’t get myself out.
In the present I am writing a poem where I go back into my light body.
All day I imagined the golden thread rebraiding between me and my planet. I could get so deep into the green, could hear the rivers meeting,
Heaven is something I’m aspiring to. I try to make it here on Earth

[Amy]

I really connect with the directness of the voice in these poems. Many of the poems seem simple, as though they were jotted down on scraps of paper, 1/day to stay here (the "Lent Cisterns" series which makes up the bulk of this volume)--poems as tethers when one doesn't feel like staying alive.

I am reminded of others' work in the best way, for example:
--Ross Gay, with a little more darkness and grief that stands in sharp contrast to the gratitude, joy, and small pleasures Calvocoressi writes about (also, the exclamation points)
--Rilke, in the "Dress for Fall" cistern quoted below
--Jericho Brown's duplex poems remind me of the cistern poems (both forms were new to me and I equate them with Brown and Calvocoressi respectively)

Calvocoressi's desires are clearly expressed here:
--to see her dead/gone loved ones again
--to wish/pray for everyone's safety and good fortune
--to try to stay alive
--to write again
--to be in a male body or at least a genderless one

Lastly, one critique, which is only my opinion: I didn't care for the use of the terms "skin sack," "light body," and "chariot" as stand-ins for body, soul I guess?, and bus/vehicle.

Just a few passages that resonated with me and felt indicative or like little summaries of this volume:

Maternal Cistern Long Cold Lonely Winter Little Walk, p. 18 [all of it!]

lines from "Jessye Norman Cistern Time to Dress for Fall," pp. 39-40:

I've been trying what seems my
whole life ... to describe
the feeling of waking up in the darkness
to the feeling of my grandmother's mink
coat tickling my cheek.
//
I'd wait
up as long as I could for her to come up
and kiss me. But I was always surprised.
Little minks. Horrible. But also. I'd do
anything. Literally anything to feel my grandmother
kiss me again.
//
I figured I'd just speak plainly.
It's time to dress for fall.

a line from "27 Wind in the Ear," p. 84:

I walk by the graveyard with a warm taiyaki in my/hand.

lines from "One Bright Room," p. 89:

Everyone fasting for Ramadan
and at night the sound of feasting. All the
strangers coming through the open city's
doors. Jasmine everywhere. A thousand
boats bobbing on the shore.

a line from "44 Every Day but Sunday," pp. 115-116:

this absolute empire of being alive

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

from Affirmation Cistern When I Let Go of My Fear My Life Becomes Magical
The trees and I open our mouths
together and become a different
kind of vessel. A lightship full of birdsong. (5)

Let My Story Fall Away Behind Me
Let the past fall away
in order to focus
on the edgeworthia's
redolent bloom. The bees
map the air outside
the bee box. Satchels
of pollen heavy on
their furry legs.
It's hard, isn't it, not
to look backward?
To let the story
live outside myself.
Have I ever
made a poem
that didn't look
inward? Do I know
a story worth
telling about the earth? (48)

Just the Facts Practice: Sunday Night
I'm nervous to give the talk about
Mary Oliver.

It was just supposed
to be a lunch but now it's in an
auditorium and there's live-streaming.

I don't even know how to talk
about queerness anymore.

So how did I get in this mess of talking
about it in relation to Mary Oliver?

What if for thirty-five minutes I talk
about the waterfall?

And sitting on the rocks by the river beside
my mother's first house?

Reading her green Selected next
to the house where my mother
lived before she met my father.

Before she had me.

There's a picture of her the day
she bought the house with her
first husband.

She's peering in the window,

a black cat is walking past.

I don't want to talk about my mother
in poems anymore.

It's like that poem "Dogfish" says

except I'm the one
who doesn't want to hear about it.

Is that the truth?

Next door the new neighbors are spending their
second night here.

I think we'll plant a wall of rosemary between us.

The soft animal something something

loves what it loves. (82)

[Ajuni Zubieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hammon B-3 Organ Cistern!!!
Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you!!!!
"Like your bones that you kept safe"
"Oh, my planet, how beautiful
you are. Little curve that leads me
to the lakeside. Let me step out

of the sack of skin I wore
on Earth. It's good to be home.
No more need to name me. No more"
"But I don't know My teacher had us imagine we had
Seven years to live
Seven months to live
Seven weeks to live
Seven days
Seven hours
I spent the whole seven seconds just counting."
"Me and my body. Who are often not the same."
"I'm finding new paths/to the sweetness."
"Marvelous. Marveling"
"I try not to get anxious. I remember the layers.
Lying in bed all those years ago
after my mind broke. My mind still breaks
in the darkness"
"No Poems Today

Because you're here. There's warm
bread to be eaten. With cheese an jam."
"But God, I just think well I just think
thank you for this poem and all the days
of baseball. I didn't think I'd make it.

Not here like this. I thought
I'd never be happy again."
What sadness, what joy!

[Kaela Camara]

If I were only rating the first half of this collection, I would give it five stars, easily. There were no duds. Unfortunately, the lent poems didn’t capture my attention as much as the others did. They continue on with the themes introduced in the first half, but in a voice that I just connect with less.

Favorites:

Hammond B-3 Organ Cistern

Affirmation Cistern When I Let Go of My Fear My Life Becomes Magical

Karma Affirmation Cistern Don’t Be Afraid Keep Going Toward the Horror

Light Body Cistern Be Gone from the Place You Almost Destroyed

Maternal Cistern Long Cold Lonely Winter Little Walk

Homecoming Cistern Alien Vessel

Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu that we love.

Mayflower Cistern I Feel My Pilgrim Worry

Neighbor Reckoner Cistern Michael Comes to Help

Michael When You Left I Heard Three Shots

Stacking Cistern My Bones on Top of Your Bones on Top of Your Bones

5. After the Party

19. Wildflowers on the ground, bears and wolves in the hills

[Lindsey Z · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have a body that fails to cooperate with your personal desires and ambitions, that betrays you on the regular, the poetry in this collection will both tear and repair something inside of you. How do I respect my malfunctioning body? How do I accept my many human flaws? How do I radically hope and look for beauty and abundance amidst the brokenness in my muffled reality?

Calvocoressi’s poetry offers a pathway out of the claustrophobia that our bodies can sometimes be. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be necessary for the possibility of a sane and affirming existence.

“why does the body
always come knowing
when i’ve had the perfect
day. why does it turn
every part into a rehearsal
for my funeral. every
celebration into a eulogy.
i should remember
the best part of the day”

[Ben Wenzl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first fell in love with Calvocoressi’s work when a friend singled out “An Inn for the Coven” (found in this collection!) from You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. Then I saw “Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.” making the rounds and being shared by many poets I really admire. Loved it, too.

I most loved the wonder and magic found within this collection. Even amidst the heaviness, this collection is buoyed with hope & resilience, in choosing light. In being light. It made me hungry for more life and more joy and and and and and. Thank you, poet. You shine so brightly.

[Rose Eleusis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Calvocoressi's poems on Poetry Foundation years ago and still love them so I was thrilled to find this in the college library. Unfortunately, the cistern poems were a bit too wallowing for my tastes- I can recognzie their craft, but I don't want to fill my mind with that level of darkness. I was deeply moved by the Lenten poems, though. They hit a nerve with me as a queer ex-Catholic.

Still have no idea what a cistern is.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5. Maybe even 5. Idk wow. It took me a while to get into it but by the end every poem was hitting me right in the chest. So so beautiful. A wonderful job of capturing so many emotions. Joy, tenderness, frustration, and even the feelings we deem unnameable. Calvocoressi finds ways to put them to words here.

I mean wow. I started this collection thinking "ok maybe this isn't totally my vibe" to almost crying at the final lines. Like really. It's that good.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poet lets the reader in so thoughtfully, sharing personal experiences of suicidal ideation, gender dysphasia, and more layered with universal grappling with loss and grief. “Hammond B-3 Organ Cistern” “Miss You. Would Like to Take a Walk with You” are instant favorites.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boom from the start. The skin sacks the light the questions we ask ourselves.
"Just say / how much you wanted to hurt someone like you got hurt."
The first half held me tighter than the second, but I was there for it all.

[Nuha · Rating 5 out of 5]

a poetry book for poets, for friends, for all the kindnesses in the world. the miss you series is one of my favorite threads in Calvocoressi's poetry collection, along with their effortless ease in making the reader feel at home. a perfect accompaniment to Robin Wall Kimmerer's Serviceberry.

[Christian Yeo · Rating 5 out of 5]

stunning

[rhiannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely incredible collection

[jonas · Rating 5 out of 5]

“… Sometimes the things
that matter to you won’t matter
to anyone but you. And that’s redemption.”

Guide to everyday curiosity. Love you Gaby!