“Super Villains” by Matthew Olzmann

The poem “Super Villains,” along with a short introduction, by alumnus Matthew Olzmann (poetry, ’09) appears at Poetry Northwest:

“It feels strange to write an “introduction” for this piece because—while writing the poem—what I thought it was “about” kept shifting. When I thought I was describing old-fashioned, human meanness, what I actually wrote was a mere caricature of that meanness. When I began to humanize that caricature, to make it more tangible and honest, what I wrote was actually about empathy.”

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