Reflecting on Spring’s Poetry
Happy Summer Solstice! I don’t know where spring went, but I do know that a lot of spectacular poetry titles have been published over these brighter months. I celebrated the arrival of last season by spending the evening with the “Spring” section of The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón, completing my third read of the U.S. Poet Laureate’s latest collection. And I’m still twirling the final sentence of “Stillwater Cove” around in my brain: “Could you refuse me if I asked you / to point again at the horizon, to tell me / something was worth waiting for?”
Published from March 20th through June 20th of 2023, this list of recent releases features only collections I have finished (with the exception of the summer title I’m looking forward to). In the effort of gushing about as many new releases as possible, I wrote about several spring titles in 10 Essential Poetry Books by AAPI Authors. So, even though they don’t appear below, I highly recommend Jessica Q. Stark’s Buffalo Girl; Vandana Khanna’s Burning Like Her Own Planet; Emily Lee Luan’s 回 / Return; and Brandy Nālani McDougall’s ‘Āina Hānau / Birth Land.
And as I type this, some spring remains, and more spring titles await me on Goldie, my sturdy book cart: Once a City Said, edited by Joy Priest; Kim Hyesoon’s Phantom Pain Wings, translated by Don Mee Choi; and Things I Didn’t Do with This Body by Amanda Gunn. I also borrowed Above Ground by Clint Smith from my treasured library.
Because summer reading awaits us, onto the poetry books that brought extra light to my past months of warm rain, later sunsets, and jasmine and gardenia blooms!
Spring Poetry Titles
Trace Evidence by Charif Shanahan
Through three sections, splendid line after splendid line of Shanahan’s sophomore poetry collection stilled my breath in my chest, made me dog-ear piece after piece. Philosophical and poignant, this meditation on the self and race, the 30-something years, an accident, and healing and moving brims with the kindnesses of family, friends, and lovers. These poems made me grab my phone to say hello to my dearests. Try to pore over the ending of “Thirty-Fifth Year” and not reach out to a loved one: “A dear older friend was right to remind me, once, / Though it’s returned to me again and again / And again: You are actually very good at joy—
I Am the Most Dangerous Thing by Candace Williams
Featuring ghazals, “whiteout erasure” poems, and bops, the innovative poems in this collection, comprised of three titled parts, explore gender, inheritance, violence, and survival. I found “Vows for a Herring Cove Wedding Amongst Loves and Plovers” by Williams especially stunning. I read and revisited it, admiring the rhyme of the title, how the words love and lovers live inside of Plovers, the sparse end punctuation. And its final couplet made me scoop my heart up off of the floor, “And dear Candace when did you know you’d found love? / Love is not found—love is the weaving we do each day”
Overland by Natalie Eilbert
In Eilbert’s third poetry collection, the opening and titular poem, “Overland,” begins, “It isn’t useful to celebrate being alive. / But I’d like to be generous. . . .” In four numbered sections, these tender poems examine grief and memory, disasters and light, and nature and science. Some sentences left me breathless, like this one from “The Lake”: “Never have I been in a weather / more like my moods.” And some sentences gutted me, like this one from “Consultation”: “Nobody was ever / around to guard me like a ghazal.” I see myself studying this book — full of wisdom — carefully, scribbling definitions in the margins and handwriting quotes in my notebook.
Mare’s Nest by Holly Mitchell
While flying over the West Coast and the Pacific Ocean, I devoured Mitchell’s intimate debut collection. With my phone turned off, I scribbled notes on the back of my boarding pass, which worked another full-time job as my bookmark, and I speckled page edges with hearts and lines and even a star and an exclamation point. Unfolding in two parts, this delves into, of course, horses and family, names, and growing up on a farm. Beyond the gorgeous cover, gorgeous poems await from “Kentucky River Palisades” to “Great-Grandma Weaver” to “As We Sang on Cinder Blocks.”
Bread and Circus by Airea D. Matthews
Since the publication of Simulacra by Matthews in 2017, I’ve been a fan of the poet’s work, and this much-anticipated collection from the Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, does not disappoint. Through “[e]xtraction”s and “[e]xtraction and extension”s of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations as well as contrapuntal and prose poems, this interrogates childhood and parenthood, fear and hope, and language and mythology. I read this slowly, and I read each poem at least twice, and still it, along with its accompanying black-and-white images, is one I want to revisit. A short list of just three of the poems I keep flipping back to: “etymology,” “His Eye on the Sparrow,” and “Nevertheless.”
Dreaming the Mountain by Tuệ Sỹ, translated by Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins
In this captivating chronological compilation, the “Introduction” offers background on the Vietnamese writer, “Tuệ Sỹ, born in 1943, joined a Zen order at the age of ten and later became an eminent Buddhist scholar, professor, poet, and translator.” Reflecting on dreams, the sky, spirituality, and wandering, I leafed through this in an afternoon, a night, and a morning, carrying it with me in my purse. Physically beautiful, the original poems appear in bright green and the translations in black. Take in these two breathtaking lines from “Refrains for Piano”: “Back then I loved you / Restless mountain moon”
I Do Everything I’m Told by Megan Fernandes
Funny and compelling, this stellar collection from Fernandes begins with “Tired of Love Poems” and ends with “Love Poem,” and so much love and desire and friendship resides between. Told in four parts, every sentence of this wowed me in one way or another or in myriad ways. Traveling to New York, Paris, Shanghai, Venice, Saturn, and elsewhere, this exploration of beloveds and cats, cemeteries and cities, and flowers and joy delighted me. Seriously, I want a copy for every room, a copy for every tote. Immediately after finishing this, I added the poet’s previous collection, Good Boys, to my TBR list.
A Summer Poetry Title on My Mind
The Ferguson Report: An Erasure by Nicole Sealey
Set to publish in mid-August, Sealey’s second full-length poetry book will be released by Knopf. The author of Ordinary Beast, a collection I reread every year, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named redacts the Department of Justice’s report investigating the practices of the local police department and court system following Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, during the summer of 2014. If you want to learn more about this title by the founder of The Sealey Challange, The Nation, Poem-a-Day, and The Rumpus published excerpts. Make sure you include this in your must-preorders.
If you crave more poetry in your bookish life, check out the previous season’s installment, Reflecting on Winter’s Poetry; 19 Best Summer Poems To Enjoy By The Water; and our poetry archives.
