You Should Feel Bad by Laura Cresté

Selected and introduced by Stephanie Burt

Poetry—even the plainest (and these poems aren’t plain)— isn’t about what happens next, or who does what to whom, but about how it happens, and how it feels. The best poems make you say, on first read, “What?” and then, on returning, “Oh!” or “Yes.” And they can hold wisdom, implied or explicit, reassuring or unsettling, nostalgic or forward-looking or scary or maybe—as in Laura Cresté’s poems—all three at once. “I thought I wanted to be in love but really / I wanted something to do with my hands.”

—Stephanie Burt

Laura Cresté holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and a BA from Bennington College. The winner of Breakwater Review's 2016 Peseroff Prize, her poems have appeared in No Tokens, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Powder Keg, and Bodega. She lives in Brooklyn.

Edition: 500 copies of the winning books were printed by the Prolific Group and designed by Gabriele Wilson, with covers by Dan Funderburgh.