Some British poetry books I can’t wait for: Isn’t Forever by Amy Key and Us by Zaffar Kunial. Kingdom of Gravity by Nick Makoha is a poetry book I revisit when I need quiet poems of witness and careful intensity. I laughed and sighed all the way through this. It speculates on the “heroic” mixed race identities of Barack Obama and Keanu Reeves. Mixed-Race Superman by Will Harris is an essay written by one of British poetry’s leading new names. Visceral and beautiful, sometimes vile but always alive. Working Class Voodoo by Bobby Parker is one of my favorite British poetry collections this year. The poems brush through bustling cities of people living so close to the live rail of poverty and violence that everything they say is about survival. Eisen-Martin’s poems are full of suspense, lyric, and loose logic.
Heaven Is All Goodbyes by Tongo Eisen-Martin. Lyrical, dramatic narratives full of literal and figurative transformations and transcendence. Their presence has been making me feel less alone in the universe. Last Psalm at Sea Level by Meg Day, a fellow Deaf poet and teacher living in Lancaster, PA. It is both delightful and aching, in equal measure. Aimee Nezhukumatathil really created something special with Oceanic, I think. It’s so patient, which I’ve needed reminders of. So glad Justin Phillip Reed’s Indecency is out in the world properly. The poems are doing such great work sonically, for me. I read with Douglas Manuel at AWP this year and have really fallen in love with his book Testify.
There was something about the boldness of a musician who felt they had significantly less to lose, for better or (often) worse. I’m reading a Rolling Stone interview with Van Morrison, another with Patti Smith. I’m picking about some old musician profiles from the seventies, which is my favorite era of The Musician Interview. I’ve also been watching a lot of videos of Soul Train lines on YouTube, which I believe is also a type of reading-I’ve immersed myself so into this project that I have begun to consider movement a type of language. And now I’m really wrapped up in this whole thing about Soul Train lines, so I’ve been reading The Hippest Trip in America: Soul Train and the Evolution of Culture & Style by Nelson George. I’ve been somewhat obsessively writing on dance, especially black people dancing. This month contributors to the May 2018 issue share some recommendations. The Reading List is a feature of Poetry ’s Editors’ Blog.
0 kommentar(er)
