Poet Maggie Millner Reads from Debut ‘Couplets: A Love Story’ for Poetry at Bennington

On Wednesday, October 9th, the first Poetry at Bennington reading of the fall term was held in Tishman auditorium. Maggie Millner read from her debut book of poems, Couplets: A Love Story. The book is a New York Times Editors’ Choice, one of The Atlantic‘s ten best books of 2023, and a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award in Poetry, the PEN/Voelcker Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for lesbian poetry.

As usual, the event began with an introduction from Michael Dumanis. He called the book a “sly, intelligent,funny, and moving, audacious novel in verse.” The book is told mainly in rhyming couplets, as the name suggests, with some prose as well. It is a long narrative, following a 

woman living in New York City with a serious and long term boyfriend who falls in love with a woman and begins dating her.

Maggie read pieces from different moments in the story of the book. It started with the meeting, a platonic blind date in Brooklyn, in which she spotted her love interest reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch and was entranced. She then read sections from the middle portion of indecisiveness and forbidden desire– a story of sneaking away from a literary party to meet her lover. By the end, the poet and her female lover are in a relationship, but it is unclear whether it will last.

Millner writes with snappy language and rhymes that make it enjoyable to listen to and the story easy to become involved in. Hearing Millner read her work out loud was a treat; I found myself enthralled by the story and lulled by the rhythm. Lines such as “nothing right should feel this dirty” capture the pleasure of obsession, even when you know it is not meant to be. The story was funny as well.

Millner also has some funny observations on her circle of literary Brooklyn dwellers. In describing the boredom of a party the narrator remarks, “Since when is pleather vegan leather.” Throughout the reading, laughs arose from the crowd and Millner interacted, sometimes commenting on a line or a reference mentioned in the reading.

After the reading, copies of Couplets: A Love Story were sold and Millner stuck around to sign them. Couplets: A Love Story is available from Macmillan publishers and other sellers online.