#poetry reviews

[alightinthelantern]

Books read and movies watched in 2024 (January-June): Should you watch/read them?

Poetry:

In the Next Galaxy (Ruth Stone): No

Selected Poems (Mark Strand): No

In the Dark (Ruth Stone): Yes!

Response (Juliana Spahr): Yes

The Unicorn (Anne Morrow Lindbergh): No!

Everything Else in the World (Stephen Dunn): Yes

Words Under the Words (Naomi Shihab Nye): Eh

On Love and Barley (Matsuo Basho, trans. Lucien Stryk): Yes!

The Transformation (Juliana Spahr): No

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Matsuo Basho, trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa): No

The Book of Taliesin (anon., trans. Gwyneth Lewis & Rowan Williams): No

What Love Comes To: New and Selected Poems (Ruth Stone): Eh

Face (Sherman Alexie): NO

No Surrender (Ai): Eh

The Summer of Black Widows (Sherman Alexie): Yes!

The Afflicted Girls (Nicole Cooley): Yes!

Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande (Jimmy Santiago Baca): No

American Smooth (Rita Dove): No

Elegy (Mary Jo Bang): No

Angel (Giles Dorey): NO

Collected Poems (Paul Auster): Eh

June-Tree (Peter Balakian): Yes

We Must Make a Kingdom of It (Gregory Orr): Eh

Only as the Day is Long (Dorianne Laux): No

Grace Notes (Rita Dove): Yes

Bathwater Wine (Wanda Coleman): Yes

My Soviet Union (Michael Dumanis): No

American Milk (Ruth Stone): Yes

The Drowned Girl (Eve Alexandra): No

A Worldly Country (John Ashberry): No

The Complete Poems of Hart Crane: No

One Stick Song (Sherman Alexie): Yes

If You Call This Cry a Song (Hayden Carruth): No

Doctor Jazz (Hayden Carruth): No

The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (Gabrielle Calvocoressi): No

And Her Soul Out of Nothing (Olena Kalytiak Davis): No

Prisoner of Hope (Yvonne Daley): No

The Other Man Was Me (Rafael Campo): No

My Wicked Wicked Ways (Sandra Cisneros): No

On Earth (Robert Creeley): Eh

Genius Loci (Alison Hawthorne Deming): Eh

Science and Other Poems (Alison Hawthorne Deming): Eh

Voices (Lucille Clifton): Yes

A New Path to the Waterfall (Raymond Carver): Eh

Where Shadows Will (Norma Cole): No

The Way Back (Wyn Cooper): No

A Cartography of Peace (Jean L. Connor): No

Minnow (Judith Chalmer): Yes!

Postcards from the Interior (Wyn Cooper): Yes

Natural History (Dan Chiasson): Eh

The Ship of Birth (Greg Delanty): Eh

Madonna anno domini (Joshua Clover): NO

The Terrible Stories (Lucille Clifton): No

The Flashboat (Jane Cooper): Eh

Book of Longing (Leonard Cohen): No

Streets in Their Own Ink (Stuart Dybek): Eh

Different Hours (Stephen Dunn): Yes

I Love This Dark World (Alice B. Fogel): Eh

Baptism of Desire (Louise Erdrich): Yes!

The Eternal City (Kathleen Graber): Eh

Monolithos (Jack Gilbert): Yes

Crown of Weeds (Amy Gerstler): No

Blue Hour (Carolyn Forché): No

Place (Jorie Graham): No

Meadowlands (Louise Gluck): Yes!

Dearest Creature (Amy Gerstler): No

Loosestrife (Stephen Dunn): No

Little Savage (Emily Fragos): Yes

The Living Fire (Edward Hirsch): No

On Love (Edward Hirsch): No

Human Wishes (Robert Hass): NO

Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (B. H. Fairchild): No

Sinking Creek (John Engels): No

Alabanza (Martín Espada): Yes

Saving Lives (Albert Goldbarth): No

All of It Singing (Linda Gregg): No

Green Squall (Jay Hopler): No

Tender Hooks (Beth Ann Fennelly): No

After (Jane Hirshfield): Eh

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty (Tony Hoagland): NO

These Are My Rivers (Lawrence Ferlinghetti): No

Fruitful (Stephanie Kirby): No

Jaguar Skies (Michael McClure): No

Song (Brigit Pegeen Kelly): No

Roadworthy Creature, Roadworthy Craft (Kate Magill): No

Life in the Forest (Denise Levertov): No

Viper Rum (Mary Karr): No

Questions for Ecclesiastes (Mark Jarman): No

Brutal Imagination (Cornelius Eady): Yes

Alphabet of Bones (Alexis Lathem): No

Handwriting (Michael Ondaatje): No

Sure Signs (Ted Kooser): No

Sledding on Hospital Hill (Leland Kinsey): No

Between Silences (Ha Jin): Yes

House of Days (Jay Parini): No

Bird Eating Bird (Kristin Naca): Yes

Orpheus & Eurydice (Gregory Orr): Yes

Another America (Barbara Kingsolver): Yes

Candles in Babylon (Denise Levertov): Yes

The Clerk's Tale (Spencer Reece): Eh

Still Listening (Angela Patten): Yes

A Thief of Strings (Donald Revell): No

Wayfare (Pattiann Rogers): No

The Niagara River (Kay Ryan): No

The Bird Catcher (Marie Ponsot): No

Easy (Marie Ponsot): No

Human Dark with Sugar (Brenda Shaughnessy): No

Chronic (D. A. Powell): No

Novels/Fiction:

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Yiyun Li): No

The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories: Yes

Movies:

What Dreams May Come (1998, Vincent Ward): Yes

The Cat's Meow (2001, Peter Bogdanovich): Yes

The Birdcage (1996, Mike Nichols): Yes

The Color of Pomegranates (1969, Sergei Parajanov): No

The Eve of Ivan Kupalo (1969, Yuri Ilyenko): Yes

And here's my 2023 list!

[bookspotlight]

Review Roundup: The Orc Who Saved Christmas (2023), No Period (2020), She Was the Storm (2018), Super Gay (2022), Symphony of Secrets (2022)

Book reviews here.

[loveelizabeths]

love elizabeth s.

[outerblog]

It was a joy to read and review Dominique Hecq's chapbook of prose poems, Endgame with No Ending.

[randomgirl005]

[readsunshine]

I'm almost never angry but all the hurt I've bottled inside me make me look like I'm someone with rage.

[0thello]

Undine (sculpture), 1904 - 1988.

by Isamu Noguchi.

[logophilist1982]

Franz Kafka & love

[ivynightshade]

fatima aamer bilal, from being unwanted is a language.

[text id: the world is happening in a room that i can't enter, life is happening in a gathering i am not invited to. / being unwanted is a language i am fluent in.]

[deadlypoetacademia]

Is it normal to be happy and sad and hurting and healing and mad and guilty and jealous and calm, all at the same time?

[abellinthecupboard]

Be Not Afraid

An angel came into my room all like BE NOT AFRAID The angel was in flickering black-and-white or in Technicolor depending on the angle The angel was a giant rabbit six foot three or actually the angel was just some guy in a coat The angel was like looking in a mirror but only out of the corner of your eye at night The angel said WE HAVE A LOT IN COMMON The angel said I CAN SENSE THE INTENSITY OF YOUR LONGING YOUR LOVE THE WEIGHT OF YOUR DEVOTION NOT TO GOD BUT HUMANITY DOESN’T IT SUCK I said sure he said LOOK WE HAVE THE SAME EYES and so we did numerous and blue the angel said I’M HERE FOR YOU I said okay but as in I’m your friend or as in I’m here to exhort you to abide by the will of God and we both laughed I said fine what’s God’s will for me then He said through a thousandth mouth I could not see: YOU MUST BE VERY CAREFUL AND YOU MUST BE KIND YOU MUST BE AFRAID YOU MUST NEVER BE AFRAID YOU MUST BE THE CONDUIT THROUGH WHICH THE WORLD SEES ITSELF A MIRROR HELD INFINITELY UP TO ITSELF EVERYONE WILL LOVE YOU NO ONE WILL LOVE YOU LEARN TO ACCEPT THIS YOU MUST BE DECORATIVE YOU MUST BE SUBSTANTIAL YOU MUST BE HYPOTHETICAL YOU MUST BE FOOLPROOF YOU MUST BE FOOLED YOU MUST BE SORRY YOU MUST BE SORRY YOU WILL ENGAGE IN MINOR FORMS OF PROPHECY AND IT WILL NOT TURN OUT WELL FOR YOU LEARN TO ACCEPT THIS YOU WILL BE ARRAIGNED ON CHARGES OF DESIRE YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED WANT WANT IS ALL YOU WILL HAVE YOU MUST FORGIVE YOU MUST NEVER BE FORGIVEN YOU MUST NOT DO WHAT GOD HAS WILLED FOR YOU EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH WILL BE CHANGED AND FORGET YOU YOU MUST DESTROY YOURSELF YOU MUST ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE DESTROYED IT IS FOR THE GOOD OF MANKIND THAT YOU DO THIS and I said where will you be Will you stay with me I said hello?

—Ellie Black, featured in Washington Square Review, Issue 52 (source)

[ancientsstudies]

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.

ig credit: vintagesoul_reads.

[soul-from-another-era]

Feel it. The thing that you don't want to feel. Feel it and be free.

[jacibwrites]

Five years since Suitable made its way into the world. Grateful to everyone who has read it.

Suitable for All Methods of Communication by Jacquelyn Bengfort

published by Ghost City Press, can be found here

Read while sitting in bed listening to AM Joy

Author’s note explains the method of communication and I already know I’m gonna like this book

First poem, “Prayer,” and I’m blown away

BRAVO KILO DELTA VICTOR UNAONE

                 You are overhead                  I am adrift

I want to get a line from this poem tattooed on the inside of my wrist

Of course the trouble is KILO looks so random without context but it means something important you know?

“Love Song” has a refrain & I think someone could sing this, though I realize singing the “UNIFORM SIERRA UNAONE” part will defeat the purpose of communicating in signal

WWI was, I think, called “the writers’ war” and “Lament” fits it perfectly

Do you think the soldiers who fought in WWI would be disappointed if they saw us now

I think everyone in history would be disappointed if they saw us now tbh

“Ode” is, if I could be forgiven some Gen Z talk, a big mood. The ocean is so amazing and we all should be grateful we have it

I looked up the NATO alphabet to see if I could write a message in it. All I could come up with was this:

BRAVO ZULU TANGO YANKEE

             Wonderfully done              Thank you

[loveelizabeths]

love elizabeth s.

[readsunshine]

I'm not angry anymore, I don't have the energy for that, I'm just exhausted.