Both, Apollo

by Mary Wilson

A poetry collection that employs intuition, humor, and celebration while seeking to break out of restrictive social structures. 
 
Mary Wilson’s  Both, Apollo  speaks from inside the bodies and binaries that so often act as constraints. It sometimes tries to negotiate its way out. It laments, celebrates, reasons, jokes, and occasionally begs. It runs into a wall and hugs it, offers it pizza, and speeds through grammars and cities until dizziness catapults it from the grid. It tries to queer the echoes of its language in the hope that a rhyme might break the logic of “either/or” and give rise to “both/and.”
 
Both, Apollo  is a love poem to whatever has the grace to appear, quietly finding hope. Moments of humor and tenderness accompany the speaker with each act of crossing and circling back. The poems in  Both, Apollo  are constantly in flux, and Wilson’s lyricism acts as a teaching tool for using both the real and the imagination to guide us in moment-by-moment navigation of our world. 
 
Both, Apollo  won the Omnidawn Chapbook contest, selected by Victoria Chang.
 

40 pages, Paperback

Published July 21, 2022

About the author

Mary Wilson was best known as a founding member and longest member of the Supremes. Wilson remained with the group following the departures of other original members, Florence Ballard and Diana Ross. Following Wilson's own departure in 1977, the group disbanded. Wilson has since released three solo albums, five singles and two best-selling autobiographies, Dreamgirl: My Life As a Supreme, a record setter for sales in its genre, and Supreme Faith: Someday We'll Be Together; both books later were released as an updated combination

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