The insightful debut by James explores the body and identity with bracing honesty and directness. Fatness and its accompanying social stigma are central themes but make up only one aspect of a more intricate, intersectional perspective. “When you are fat and queer and female and black/ When no one has any use for you except/ Your otherness// When your otherness is a currency,” James writes, laying bare the experience of tokenization and commodification of difference. Many poems ponder the objectification of Black female bodies within a matrix of beauty standards that shift across cultural contexts, from the U.S. to Trinidad to Nigeria, reflected in the speaker’s weary address: “Reader,/ I have been picked up, put down and considered, casually and constantly, which is the privilege/ of beauty.” James plots a difficult course toward bodily autonomy: “No matter how they/ try to claim you, your body/ will never belong to them. It will/ always be ours.” Often transgressive and always enlightening, this provocative collection confronts what it means to see and be seen, to consume and be consumed. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 06/28/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this life-affirming and refreshing fourth collection, McLarney (Forage) finds beauty in simplicity and experience. These long-lined narrative poems are skillfully rendered, steeped in the southern Appalachia of her foremothers’ kitchens and landscapes. McLarney’s voice is direct and companionable as she traces how the past, which melts away into history and heritage, lives on in the solar plexus of memory. Her poems about a cat rival Christopher Smart’s depiction of Geoffrey in “Jubilate Agno,” capturing the animal’s grace and mystery: “of all the litters ever bred./ And couldn’t the stripes/ of all the tabbies, untwined, turn out to be a single string?” Elsewhere, she considers creation through the stories of Adam and Noah while examining her husband’s ribs: “if he was called keel-chested, at least he might be a boat./ Yes, let him be an ark where a creature can shelter, stay.” Heaven resembles “an empty homestead, set way back from any road,” where the speaker prefers to be. These excellent poems are a testament to finding wonder in the world’s simple truths. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 06/28/2024 | Details & Permalink

Savich (Daybed) delivers a profound meditation on life’s ephemeral nature in his ruminative fifth collection. These poems capture fleeting moments with a delicate, introspective touch, masterfully blending personal narratives with existential themes. “Given the shortness of life// it’s fine to act like it’s longer,” Savich writes in “featured totalities.” The volume boasts formal and stylistic variety, its language characterized by a rhythmic movement that mirrors the ebb and flow of time in memory: “The compass needle refines until// precision blurs” (“pew”). Savich’s use of white space and caesura slows the reader’s pace of reading, amplifying the meditative quality of these reflections. Lines such as “tell me about the leaves that turn green again// or another green and// never fall” (“scrap diamond”) are rich with sensory details that make transient states of being immersive. These evocative poems mine the complexities of existence and the personal and collective search for meaning. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 06/28/2024 | Details & Permalink

Hejinian (The Unfollowing), who died this year, was a founder of the Language poetry movement of the 1970s. In this atmospheric latest, she exposes “sharp shapes of syntax/ from a forest as absences rise/under guests of meaning.” A “fall creek” is an apt metaphor and vehicle for poetry and consciousness itself: “river and river refueled refilled refigured remembered/ crisp and cold as a Gravenstein that Antarctic/ of apples in shadows/ and green ales with authors.” Hawks, cataracts, executioners, motorcycles, the hauling of carbon, and such memories as “a blue Schwinn/ and a basket of syncopated pebbles” surface against “mica light” as each line turns away from what’s expected toward surprise: “thought into fruits on a grandmother/ of trees aproned somewhere/ raptor-forested/ with gray-green philosophy.” A note credits British poet J.H. Prynne with the concept of “driftwork,” which seems to apply to Hejinian’s drifting thought practice on the page. Meaning becomes purposefully provisional, an artistic statement in itself. Readers willing to go with the flow will be riveted. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 06/28/2024 | Details & Permalink

Gellman’s affecting debut is filled with heartbreak, transformation, and light. Family members (mother, father, younger brother, an imagined sister) appear throughout, along with lost boys and men, some of whom are childhood friends and others intimate partners. In “Tyler,” the speaker is one of many tough boys “filling another boy’s bedroom/ with the softer parts of himself.” Metaphors bring humans and nature into sharper focus, as in “Mother, After the Hurricane” (“there’s hardly a stammer in the sky”) and “St. Timothy’s School, 1975” (“our loneliness is a lineage heavy as a heatwave,/ inevitable as a blizzard”). The struggle to grow is infused with longing and an apparent urge to make a difficult past nostalgic. By the book’s final poem, “Alpenglow,” the speaker says he is “not turning/ from loneliness, really, just learning/ to treat it as wind, to make a meager meal// of what boyhood of lacquer and moody/ I clung to.” In these beautiful poems, Gellman resists and airs the sources of his pain, finding a way to accept who he was and who he has become. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 06/28/2024 | Details & Permalink

Morrison’s controlled and inventive latest (after Beyond the Chainlink) employs a rigid syllable count that she describes as a way to “experience limitation as event, not aftermath.” Most entries consist of two seven-syllable phrases per line, divided by an extra space, which visually manifests as a middle margin or a spine of white that moves down the center of her poems, breaking up thoughts in unexpected ways. Her interest in limitation and control is reflected in lines about calorie intake (“Self-starving as protection/ isn’t only about food”), and Morrison is sharply self-aware about self-imposed restriction: “You want to/ trust that starving yourself seals/ what’s inside you. As safe as/ any fridge’s door. Meaning/ seepage is containable. The containment guaranteed.” The controlled structure of these poems allows for a nuanced exploration of the self, language, and others: “Here are five people/ in line at the ATM/ so separately together—/ requires a vigilance/ easy to mistake for calm.” In another piece, she bridges the gap between her own existence and a panhandler she regularly passes on the street. Through formal restraint, this collection effectively probes the secret pains and constraints all people experience. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 06/28/2024 | Details & Permalink

The abundant third collection from Daye (Cardinal) lyrically charts the history of a Black community residing on a hilltop town in North Carolina. “Do-si-do,” an early entry, begins with a child whose thunderous dancing quickly develops into a community-wide song about the kinship between past and present expressed through the land itself: “the storm’s rhythm was caught/ & cornered inside us/ older than the hill’s first field of cucumbers.” In a poem about two sisters whose mother “ate clay & lived/ to be one hundred and three,” Daye perceptively records how ancestral practices rooted in the land have changed over time. Though such acts “scared/ the Bible songs out most of us,” one sister continues to eat clay to maintain a connection to her mother and the land. Daye finds unique ways to share in the making of a community record by collaging historical documents and photographs in several poems, observing in one prose passage, “When we say we remember, that memory is happening. We are there.” These graceful and intelligent poems honor those who have come before through the vital work of remembering. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 06/28/2024 | Details & Permalink

Felsenthal (Lowly) weaves together the physical and the spiritual in his ethereal sophomore outing. Lush and evocative, these meditative poems transport readers to serene landscapes and reflective inner worlds: “Across the waning crescent/ as silver pennies drop, pods/ of honest light shine on/ the night blooming, jasmine stars/ lay out their scent, a poppy speaks” (“Of Climbing Heaven and Gazing on the Earth”). In “Elegy” and “Before Lighthouses, God Wrecked Ships,” Felsenthal juxtaposes natural elements and human emotions to explore the tension between science and religion: “electrolytes are hard to see/ though they’re everywhere./ Recover quickly/ commands the blue bottle./ When will I be able to leave/ this planet, you asked. Months/ for some, hours for others, I read/ in the hospice brochure. The Earth/ alights on the edge of the ether. Calcium/ in the crust, in the air, in water.” Felsenthal powerfully declares that “the future was memory/ and that was enough for God.” These profound yet accessible poems offer solace and insight to those navigating an unsettled existence. (June)

Reviewed on 06/28/2024 | Details & Permalink

Earnest missives addressed to a lyric “you” touch on a series of disasters—a fire, a partner’s health scare, a lost baby—in this attentive offering from Illich (Fingerspell). Poems documenting a middle-aged mother’s desperation—“I’m an hour from turning forty/ three & trying to pretend people aren’t/ out there dying”—juxtapose with those speculating on the nature of time: “What is time but the greenbloom/ and these stars beat into seafloor.” Occasionally Illich strains for a metaphor, as in “Disaster Euphoria”: “every seamstress knows/ It’s the selvage that keeps the self together.” But “Aubade,” which describes a lovers’ interlude before an awaited diagnosis, is razor-sharp: “Our sex a paperknife/ holding our place in the book of/ before we knew.” While the poems sometimes name their influences (“after Marie Howe,” “after Maggie Smith”), in “Dear Kerrie,” readers are left in the dark about the identities of those she’s quoting: “At the reading last night, R said that the unspoken last line of every poem is I am going to die. It made me think of Harvard and then of you. At Harvard I heard/ M say that all poems say Thank you or I love you or Help. Which is also the entire Beatles discography. Which makes me wonder what’s the point?” Despite its engaging tone, the collection’s occasional diffuseness may alienate some readers. (June)

Reviewed on 06/28/2024 | Details & Permalink

The observant sixth collection from Larkin (Blue Hanuman) offers an extensive miscellany while continuing the poet’s career-long interest in the body. “The body/ inside me is all thumbs,” she admits, and “My body,/ too, is a sealed record:// violence buried in stone/ I’m quarried from.” Poems inspired by musical instruments, objects, artworks (by Pierre Bonnard, Camille Claudel, Paula Moldersohn-Becker, Wayne Theibaud), animals, and linguistic characters (“Hyphen,” “Ampersand”) interweave with reflections on painful memories (“the abortion/ that’s haunted my whole life”). The title poem describes the speaker’s reunion with a long-lost knife, “dark haft, trio of nickel silver/ rivets like moons of Pluto, thin blade stained as before,” an apt metaphor for the book’s interest in writing as a weapon and tool, by turns delivering incisive wit and dislodging memories, “rak[ing]/ joy onto my plate while the gauze/ that wrapped my cut, reddened.” Meditating on a lost mitten, the aging poet asks, “Will there be time (the thought/ blew past) to own another pair?” Amid losses, restitutions, sudden joys, and unknowns, this volume sustains an appealing verve. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/28/2024 | Details & Permalink