4 Poetry Books to Read ASAP
By Stephanie Valente
February is quickly rounding to an end. Here are some books you need to put on your reading list before the month closes out.
decayed state by Vanessa Maki (marlskarx, 2020)
This collection is a metamorphosis of urgency and rawness. The poems are meticulously crafted with a tone spiked with familiarity, knowingness, even intimacy that we've all known. It's a kind of intimacy many of us have run to, or run from. Look at the poem, destiny, closely and tell us you've been there, too: "once more i have made/a home in this dark & glorious space/one that i have chosen for myself." And it goes on. Maki weaves a distinct sense of relatability. We can see our selves and our experiences reflected back in urgency and longing in the piece "i suppose you can call me bold." This is all of us: "i’m a glutton for difficulty. i chase after the wolves right after they get sick of me." Take a spell inside this collection; be a caterpillar and have a metamorphosis.
YOU & ME FOREVER by Valerie Hsiung (Action Books, 2020)
If you're carving scintillating visions and prismatic dreams, look no further. Hsiun's work enters an atmosphere full of adjacent existences, dreamscapes, and the tangible: "The wolf laps at the water, the pen glides over paper, the wolf laps at the water, the AI touches my hands, the wolf laps at the river, we are clowns, and there is nothing between us. I lick and lap at the magnetic water, become a part of the magnet, we are clowns—" It's dizzying, delightful, and enrapturing. At the same time, the poetry has a sense of knowing, it's it's deeply impactful. The line: "Someone pulls down on the string you’ve been walking on for several decades" is rooted in its straightforwardness and its complexity. Lap at it. Lap again.
Letdown by Sonia Greenfield (White Pine Press, 2020)
Letdown is the mystical blend of a memoir and a love letter. Greenfield crafted a magnificent and insightful body of poems that weave together world of existence. The existence of identity, fertility, self, sexuality, motherhood, and diagnosis. While exploring metaphorical and literal births, Greenfield wrote: "In the dark, after the hatching, they honked their horns of distress while I birthed a boy in sterile light, at three in the morning, in the wing of a hospital." The poet transforms: lingering in-between phases like a blossoming purgatory or pause. This is not to say, a force to be held back on, instead the words explore a sense of deep unfurling. The phases between the transformations are quite powerful in their own right. I'll leave you with this gem: "We’re casting a spell over the land. You ask me to pretend you are a baby, so I swing and soothe your cries. We make believe I am comforting you, and you comfort me." Ponder. Swing. Linger.
Ways We Vanish by Todd Dillard (Okay Donkey, 2020)
A dazzling, dizzying debut poetry collection with a visceral opening: "What is grief? Tiny bells/ringing in a somnolent hour." From there, we're off. The words are dripping quickly, with each line subtly crafted to get inside your veins and buzz and buzz and buzz. The rush continues in Cryptophasis: "Like other twins we built a language:/in father we found air." Dillard expresses raw, unyielding urgency in the poems. What is poetry without urgency? We should not know, as Dillard leverages the poetry as grasping for air. We grasp, grasp, and grasp for air and to see and be seen.
Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, New York, and works as an editor. One day, she would like to be a silent film star. She is the author of Hotel Ghost (Bottlecap Press, 2015) and Waiting for the End of the World (Bottlecap Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in dotdotdash, Nano Fiction, LIES/ISLE, and Uphook Press. She can be found at her website.
