Staff Picks: Madison Dettlinger’s Favorites

I first discovered Olivia Gatwood through her massively viral Youtube videos, specifically falling in love with “Ode to the Women on Long Island.” When I heard she was coming out with a book of poems inspired by true crime, of course I had to read it. Gatwood’s beautifully written, insightful words about violence against women and what it means to identify as female at this particular moment in time really struck a chord with me. As a sensitive teenager at heart, my favorite poem in the collection is “When I Say That We Are All Teen Girls,” which includes these incredible lines: “Even the men who laugh their condescending laughs/when a teen girl faints at the sight of her/favorite pop star, even those men are teen girls,/the way they want so badly to be big/and important and worshiped by someone.”