Publications
Any Gesture. Black Lawrence Press (April 2026)
A braided, elegiac journey through death and recovery, the poems in Whitney Koo’s debut collection, Any Gesture, takes on loss, anticipatory grief, and the little deaths experienced in the space between mourning and survival.
The collection’s four narrative threads speak to a modern, suburban Ophelia; pre-elegize a sister on the brink of suicide; reconcile miscarriage and infertility; and question the proper care for the dead in the face of escalating and dehumanized losses. In these haunting, urgent poems, Koo interrogates the notion that death is a singular event. Here, grief is illuminated as a living thing, sometimes violent, sometimes hungry, sometimes a “long / drawn sucker punch.” Through striking, vivid language, Koo reinvents the elegy as something past, present, future—and we are both witness and mourner.
Poems in Journals:
"Born from Abundant Love, Do Not Leave Me Unsworn" Shō Poetry Journal No. 8 (forthcoming)
"Blooms" the Georgia Review (forthcoming)
"Portraiture of Aftermath" South Dakota Review (2025) Print.
"On Cusps" Issue 76, Hayden's Ferry Review. (2025) Print.
"Bevy of Crows." Poetry Magazine. April Issue. (2025) Print and Web
"There is No Talent In." Ghost City Review (2024) Web.
"American Optimism" and "On Academic Life." MAYDAY Magazine (2024) Web.
"Woman Enters the Museum as a Mirror" and "The State." Seneca Review 54.1 (2024) Print.
"Ophelia in the Swanning." Issue 15, Poetry South (2024) Print.
"Not Pregnant Again." The Los Angeles Review (2023) Web.
"I Talk With a Mouth That Can't Get Up." Annulet: A Journal of Poetics (2023)
"Sister As Outlasting Character." Beaver Magazine (2023) Web.
"Elegy Against." Always Crashing (2023) Web.
“Body of Shoelace" and "The Lilacs Were Wild in the Graveyard." Figure 1 (2022) Web.
"Still During the Russian Invasion" and "Ode to the Line." Jet Fuel Review (2022): Web. *Nominated for a pushcart prize
"During the Russian Invasion" and "Seventh Elegy" Birdcoat Quarterly (2022):
"On Hunger and Birthing.” American Literary Review (2020): Web.
“Galeless.” Colorado Review (2019): Print.
“Shuyet.” Bayou Magazine (2019): Print.
“Chorus Song no. 3.” Breakwater Review (2018): Web.
Three Poems. Patient Sounds: Window 2 (2016): 21-23.
“Palimpsest.” Anamesa Journal 13.2 (2015): 9. Print
Creative Nonfiction in Journals:
"Pre-Elegy for My Sister" 2023 Winner of the Flash Majeure Prize, Storm Cellar Journal (forthcoming).
"Anti-" The Palisades Review (2023): Web.
“An Offering of Space.” Heavy Feather Review (2020): Web. *Nominated for Best of Net