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PULSE
Named for the Pulse nightclub shooting and the rhythm of heartbeats, this collection of poems grapples with finding life amid profound losses.
The poems of PULSE look deeply into a troubled world, inspecting what makes us suffer and demonstrating how we overcome difficulties. PULSE interrogates painful losses of friends to cancer, harmful politics, hate crimes, and mass shootings, including the 2016 massacre at Pulse nightclub. Maria Nazos examines the life force that continues to pulse relentlessly through a fragmented world, that enables us to flow, breathe, and regenerate, even through grief and loss. From Provincetown beaches and Costa Rican crab shacks to Midwestern plains and a Tampa nightclub, the collection moves through madness, redemption, and love.
The poems of PULSE look deeply into a troubled world, inspecting what makes us suffer and demonstrating how we overcome difficulties. PULSE interrogates painful losses of friends to cancer, harmful politics, hate crimes, and mass shootings, including the 2016 massacre at Pulse nightclub. Maria Nazos examines the life force that continues to pulse relentlessly through a fragmented world, that enables us to flow, breathe, and regenerate, even through grief and loss. From Provincetown beaches and Costa Rican crab shacks to Midwestern plains and a Tampa nightclub, the collection moves through madness, redemption, and love.
98 pages, Paperback
Published June 5, 2026
About the author
Maria Nazos
5 books14 followersMaria Nazos is the author of a poetry collection, PULSE (Omnidawn 2026), listed as one of Ms. Magazine’s “Reads for the Rest of Us: The Best Poetry of 2025 and 2026.”
Her poems, essays, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Literary Hub, Poets & Writers, and The Adroit Journal. She’s the translator of The Slow Horizon that Breathes (World Poetry Books 2023), a collection of poems from the Greek by Dimitra Kotoula, longlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award.
After a disastrous career as a whale watch boat attendant, table dancer, and waitress, she’s since settled into a quieter life as a web content designer in Lincoln, Nebraska. You can find her at www.marianazos.com.
Her poems, essays, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Literary Hub, Poets & Writers, and The Adroit Journal. She’s the translator of The Slow Horizon that Breathes (World Poetry Books 2023), a collection of poems from the Greek by Dimitra Kotoula, longlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award.
After a disastrous career as a whale watch boat attendant, table dancer, and waitress, she’s since settled into a quieter life as a web content designer in Lincoln, Nebraska. You can find her at www.marianazos.com.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 8, 2026
Gritty… Honest… a heartbeat of poetic truth
Nazos newest collection Pulse refuses to be silent, and through each poem, we unveil the heart of loss, desire, identity, resilience, and pure middle fingers up truth. This is a poet at the height of her powers and she holds nothing back. Every poem punches you in the gut, every page holds a universal truth hidden within the lines and between space and ink. This is a book that shook me, that made me feel alive, all the while weeping, laughing and howling. Nazos’s is a poet of her generation and a voice of the hearts searching for more.
Other notes:
Some of my favorite poems of this collection: Cape Code Pantoum, Barmaid’s Elegy, Ars Poetica, and The Living Ghazal.
For those of you who are reading reviews to know about the interior of the book and font type
And size (I don’t like small font and so I will intentional look at reviews for this basic fact) the font in this book is perfect, the interior design is elegant, and the cover is absolutely gorgeous. This is definitely a book you want a physical copy of.
Nazos newest collection Pulse refuses to be silent, and through each poem, we unveil the heart of loss, desire, identity, resilience, and pure middle fingers up truth. This is a poet at the height of her powers and she holds nothing back. Every poem punches you in the gut, every page holds a universal truth hidden within the lines and between space and ink. This is a book that shook me, that made me feel alive, all the while weeping, laughing and howling. Nazos’s is a poet of her generation and a voice of the hearts searching for more.
Other notes:
Some of my favorite poems of this collection: Cape Code Pantoum, Barmaid’s Elegy, Ars Poetica, and The Living Ghazal.
For those of you who are reading reviews to know about the interior of the book and font type
And size (I don’t like small font and so I will intentional look at reviews for this basic fact) the font in this book is perfect, the interior design is elegant, and the cover is absolutely gorgeous. This is definitely a book you want a physical copy of.
July 9, 2026
I was moved and felt the need to ‘see’ the poet behind PULSE namely Maria Nazos. Who was the poet to create such sublime and white-hot verse? There are elements of Gaia (earth goddess), Nemesis (goddess of retribution and vengeance) abhorring hubris. There is Lilith (voice and presence of strength and contrary convictions adored by Dante Rossetti naming her hair as “first gold”). There are rich striations of Anita O’Day who wore jackets as a 40’s jazz siren. She would match the swagger of any band leader of her time.
Is this the same poet who held together body and soul as a whale watch boat attendant and barista? Yes . . . and so I found her voice and vision in the thirty-four poems in this formidable collection.
I share my reflections on several of her pieces:
I begin with Oil (p. 38) “As I was pouring a much-needed drink after sampling my spaghetti, ______ told me it could user some olive oil . . . he hands me the oil that I bought from a proselytizing man at the general store.” These words reflect the mundane and the otherworldly nature of this poem. Further “. . . This is Nebraska, where for decades, a Black Panther was imprisoned, and where some recent graffiti reiterates these convictions still exist . . ..” The currency of this poem is often the fracture of truth and indolence, conviction, and hollow tones. Remarkable work indeed.
Woman to Woman (p.63) shares the harsh truth of abuse and misogyny spelled out between women as kindred spirits and pissed off voices rung out of tired and bruised bodies. “. . . There is this thing inside him that won’t stop chewing you, but there’s still time to run before you see what he’s done . . . “The other woman says . . . “Maybe this time, he won’t need to heat every room with rage. Maybe he can change temperature to one that falls below a hungered pitch that propels his fists . . . “The voice of reason may move the voice of self loathing to leave the abuser. The reader waits and does not know the outcome.
Finally, I select Closer to the Light (p.85) The serendipity and crack of cosmic billiard balls that define life giving and life ending circumstances races through this poem. “. . . you may be grieving the absence of a lover fighting overseas or a friend who refuses to die from a disease that singes his edges . . .” The poem continues “Tonight the world is on fire . . . Yet that’s how every hope is born - formed out of heat and pressure. It smoulders and sends up smoke, which we read as saying, Help, and we do . . . “
I highly recommend this collection for any reader who is enthusiastic about poetry and engaged in life. This work provides words that counsel and that plant the seeds of lifelong curiosity.
Is this the same poet who held together body and soul as a whale watch boat attendant and barista? Yes . . . and so I found her voice and vision in the thirty-four poems in this formidable collection.
I share my reflections on several of her pieces:
I begin with Oil (p. 38) “As I was pouring a much-needed drink after sampling my spaghetti, ______ told me it could user some olive oil . . . he hands me the oil that I bought from a proselytizing man at the general store.” These words reflect the mundane and the otherworldly nature of this poem. Further “. . . This is Nebraska, where for decades, a Black Panther was imprisoned, and where some recent graffiti reiterates these convictions still exist . . ..” The currency of this poem is often the fracture of truth and indolence, conviction, and hollow tones. Remarkable work indeed.
Woman to Woman (p.63) shares the harsh truth of abuse and misogyny spelled out between women as kindred spirits and pissed off voices rung out of tired and bruised bodies. “. . . There is this thing inside him that won’t stop chewing you, but there’s still time to run before you see what he’s done . . . “The other woman says . . . “Maybe this time, he won’t need to heat every room with rage. Maybe he can change temperature to one that falls below a hungered pitch that propels his fists . . . “The voice of reason may move the voice of self loathing to leave the abuser. The reader waits and does not know the outcome.
Finally, I select Closer to the Light (p.85) The serendipity and crack of cosmic billiard balls that define life giving and life ending circumstances races through this poem. “. . . you may be grieving the absence of a lover fighting overseas or a friend who refuses to die from a disease that singes his edges . . .” The poem continues “Tonight the world is on fire . . . Yet that’s how every hope is born - formed out of heat and pressure. It smoulders and sends up smoke, which we read as saying, Help, and we do . . . “
I highly recommend this collection for any reader who is enthusiastic about poetry and engaged in life. This work provides words that counsel and that plant the seeds of lifelong curiosity.
October 19, 2026
Love this author and love her rigorous honesty in her work.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews