Francofilaments by Eileen G’Sell, MFA ’06, is a poetic exploration of the intersections between Francophilia, feminism, and cinema. Informed by her work as a culture critic, the collection is marked by a blend of sharp wit, inventive wordplay, and a candid voice that traverses themes of desire, sex, and loss.
G’Sell’s poems move with a rhythmic, almost cinematic quality, conjuring vivid imagery and unexpected juxtapositions that invite the reader into a world where the everyday and the extraordinary coalesce. With a deft hand, she captures the nuanced interplay of language, identity, and the ever-present allure of French culture, offering a fresh perspective on what it means to navigate modern womanhood.
Praise for Francofilaments
Like an array of confections in a patisserie window, the beguilingly vibrant, compact poems in G’Sell’s Francofilaments are as meticulously constructed as they are full of surprises.
— Timothy Donnelly
Francofilaments traces the intersecting webs of Francophilia, feminism and film with delicate precision and humor … G’Sell’s poems blend pirouetting wordplay, frank address and invention in a way that is unexpected and illuminating.
— Matthea Harvey
Glorious in its swagger and seduction, Francofilaments invited me to reimagine who I could be in this world once again as a woman and a poet…
— Heather Derr-Smith
Reading Francofilaments was like being swept through the streets of Paris at night, the clack of your interloper’s heels matching the precision of her thought.
— Laura Broadbent
About the author
Eileen G’Sell is an American poet and film critic with recent contributions to Poetry, Oversound, Hyperallergic, Harp and Altar, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jacobin, The Baffler, The Art Newspaper, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Hopkins Review.
Her first volume of poetry, Life After Rugby, was published by Gold Wake Press in 2018. In 2023, she received the Rabkin Prize for arts journalism. Her first book of nonfiction, Lipstick, will join Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series in 2025. She teaches writing and media studies at Washington University in St. Louis.