Jane Muschenetz’s recently-released poetry chapbook, Power Point, explores the intersection of data and social commentary.
Using graphs, charts, and citations, the collection wrestles with contemporary social issues such as gun violence and maternal mortality through a combination of dry facts and lyricism.
Hayley Mitchell Haugen, the founding editor-in-chief of Muschenetz’s publisher, described the collection as “something new,” and “completely different.”
Muschenetz, who is also a business consultant and founder of a local grant-writing initiative in her San Diego community, uses poetry as a way to integrate her varied life and career experiences.
Her first book, All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents, was released in 2021 and was a stylistic combination of humor and tragedy, covering topics like her own immigrant experience and the war in Ukraine.
For Muschenetz, who migrated to the US with her family as a child, poetry is a welcomed return to her artistic roots and a way to honor the different parts of her identity.