Poetry to Get You Through the Winter

Cho’s debut collection is a mesmerizing mélange of wondrous imagery and sharp irony. So much of the book’s beauty comes from its thoughtful treatment of language. In several poems, Cho incorporates Korean language words (sometimes playing with how those words can be mistranslated or confused for others) in her exploration of growing up in small-town Indiana as a Korean American. As such, the poetry is full of ups and downs. At times, The Symmetry of Fish captures the poignancy of the mundane, as in the lines, “some don’t understand that we can miss people next to us / how space disappears by sitting with someone in a car not saying / anything.” At other times, Cho’s pointed irony bubbles to the surface, which is evident in poems such as the one entitled “Ode to Wanting to Run Over Other People’s Children in the Church Parking Lot.” It’s an introspective collection that, for this reader, was best encountered slowly for maximum enjoyment.

In some places, Hedge Coke catalogs the vast array of endangered and extinct flora and fauna; that these lists include only species indigenous to California only amplifies the overwhelming sense of devastation. That they’re delivered between and alongside lists of atrocities (such as massacres) fosters a connection between the environmental destruction humans have wreaked and other consequences of human violence and discrimination. Even as Look at This Blue reads as a love song to California, this is no starry-eyed Disney love song. It’s a battle-worn love song that exposes the damage and trauma, acknowledging small moments of healing alongside damning evidence of harm. Near the center of the collection, Hedge Coke writes, “Not breaking this up for comfort.” And it’s apt: her poetry is relentless, but in its relentlessness is a call to action — an insistence that we can do better, be better. To this end, a five-page-long section titled “Do the Work” containing contact information for a wide array of environmental and social justice organizations follows the poetry, providing a direction for some of the intense feelings the collection calls forth.

Alive at the End of the World is a poetic onslaught of raw emotion — in the best kind of way. It’s one of the more intense collections I’ve read in a while, as Jones simultaneously explores his grief over his mother’s passing, widespread violence in the U.S., and the latest iterations of racism — as well as the pasts they tap into. In one poem, Jones introduces a robot-boy character and writes, “The end of the world is a boy who feels all the pain we give him but never bruises, never has a history to show for who happened to him. The end of the world is a boy all alone in an electric dark telling himself a story to keep from crying without tears.” Oof. The whole book is full of powerful moments like that, each composed of carefully curated words set against a backdrop of the repeated refrain that this is the end of the world. This book feels absolutely necessary right now.

The Wanting Way will feed you for an entire season, if not more. Part of Milkweed’s series by neurodivergent writers, the collection uses language in a distinctive and memorable way. There’s something about Wolfond’s images that just captivate. Additionally, the sparing manner in which the words are arranged on the page creates a sense of quiet that complements wintertime perfectly. For example, in “The Ways of Yearning” he writes, “I must follow the thread to the end I ask others to unravel with me / It’s not about me / it’s us / we / unravel / unball.” It’s the kind of collection you can return to again and again, and each time it’ll speak to you in a new way.

Chen Chen’s second collection feels urgent. It grapples with the experience of being queer and Asian American in the current moment with its attendant pandemic, Trumpism, and rampant gun violence. The focus of the poems rove just as freely between anti-Asian hate, homophobia, and political rhetoric as they do across surprising visions of the world we live in. Lines such as these spring up throughout the collection like unexpected flowers composed of words: “Some of my favorite sunlights / include those that arrive in December / like gasps, like they’ve walked into a surprise // party, & they are the party, & it / is a ghost party.” There were moments where I laughed out loud — such as the opening of a poem called “Doctor’s Note” that reads, “Please excuse Chen Chen from class. He is currently dead. He came in last Thursday, exhibiting clear signs of dying, such as saying in a clear voice, I am nothing except the desire to listen to Coldplay” — and others that made me pause for days to consider what I’d read and contend with the emotions that lie always just below the surface of this collection.