New Books in Poetry

With air-tight verse and talent for the surreal, Ross White invokes a sibling version of our world in his new collection How We Came Upon the Colony (Unicorn Press, 2014). By tilting our view slightly to the left, he allows us to ask necessary questions of the familiar. How entitled are we to our many geographic and spiritual colonies? Has our idea of Manifest Destiny merely shifted from Westward Expansion to industry in a world that has stretched far beyond “local” but retains the individuality loaned to us by Capitalism? Can history itself be colonized? These are the poems of a mind at work sorting out an individual and shared history. That White could contain such worlds in clean and steady lines, speaks to his mastery of craft. He seeks to illuminate rather than explain, and to offer possibilities rather than moral solutions. In proof that we should still sit in wonder at these strange real and imagined worlds, the reader is left with this final image: When there is no light, the farmer smokes his pipe and waits patiently to be possessed by hope. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Does form make the poem? Robert Frost claimed that writing free verse poetry was “like playing tennis without a net.” Ryo Yamaguchi‘s poetry challenges the notion of imposing our will and wonders after the permeability of content. This poet understands the subjectivity of perception and does not insist on form, but instead loosely allows the verse to be contained. These are the experiences of a wandering poet–one who has known many containers, natural and man-made, who knows how little the natural world tolerates containment; how felled redwoods will sprout new life from up from their horizontal trunks and wisteria will climb and reach with the wide berth of the sun’s rays. But Yamaguchi does not write rainforests and plains, he writes the internal life, the interactions, the “urban sublime” and gives it the reach the natural world. He finds amazement in all versions of beauty. Say I never understood the definition of purpose, why bore, flux, revise, tender, ensconce, or what have you– never to think the metallic fires were in that much need of improvement when this pear is sweet over here in the single day of my life. Purchase this books to enjoy the groups of poems that create systems and conversations within the larger system of a collection. This will be the first of many collections by Yamaguchi and I look forward to reading the future compressions and expansions of image, container, and experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Poetry is far more than crafting verse. Poetry is a way of thought and a way of being. It seeps into every aspect of a poet’s life only to reveal that it is the life that seeped into poetry. In a series of letters penned to “Continuum,” Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie offers hard won wisdom and a glimpse at an ideal. She takes “Continuum” and the reader through her journey of discovery and coming into being as an artist. “Dear Continuum” is about access; access to mentorship, access to reading lists, access to doubt, and discovery. There was a tangible need within the community for a book like this. It was quite literally asked for, and Tallie answered that call. I would like to think that we poets are the “Continuum,” or that it exists on a different plane of being, one that can be tapped into, just as we do with poetry. The states of birth, coming to being, death and rebirth are as infinite as art–are part of the continuum. In the poet’s own words: “When life threatens to shatter you and rip your illusions to shreds, write. When you are distracted by romance, write. When you are consumed by heartache, write. When you are rejoicing, grieving, questioning, certain, write. Life itself will give you a chance to feel everything. I’ve never set a fire to feel the flames singe me. I already know the flames will come. So will water.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Karina Borowicz‘s collection Proof (Codhill Press, 2014) in three parts is a slow emerging, a crawling toward understanding. In a way that only the patience of adulthood looking back on adolescence can muster, a child’s coming to consciousness is revered — and this poet is patient. This poet will sit in waiting for the precise moment to rip the sheet off the marble block to reveal a labor of love. Every child is born he says knowing the language of trees– for so long our unformed ear is pressed to the wall of eternity The poems move from tactile to ephemeral as the speaker redefines herself through the reflections of a new culture. In her inventory of discovery, we see the menacing undertone of adolescence. With awareness comes the understanding the natural world. With the awareness of the natural world comes an understanding of violence. Finally, the poet confronts linear time to offer up to the reader the possibility that we are existing on all planes (past, present, and future), simultaneously. We are always informed by the events of our past and we are always gripping our toes on the cliff of the next moment. What we leave behind on the earth is proof that we lived. This is the place where and how many times I passed by here and of course the old handless statue whose cool features are the exact word for the situation, this constant reaching with no hope of touch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Four years in the making, Brett Fletcher Lauer and Lynn Melnick have released an anthology into the hands of a new generation of readers, writers, and listeners. Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015) features 100 contemporary poets whose work adolescents and adults alike will connect with and enjoy. Beyond poems, Melnick and Lauer have asked thought-provoking questions of their contributors and offered a means for readers to reach out to the poets via social media. Readers will also be surprised to find an additional, “secret” anthology hidden in these questions. Listen to the interview for a glimpse into the process and to hear five poets from across the country read their work. We are grateful that such a collection exists and encourage our listeners to get one for themselves and any young person who would benefit from being reminded that their experiences matter; our experiences connect us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Mass-produced, fake, sentimental, easily digestible: when we think of kitsch these elements often come to mind. Furthermore, kitsch is almost always associated with material culture, but in Daniel Tiffany‘s new book, My Silver Planet: A Secret History of Poetry and Kitsch (John Hopkins University Press, 2014), the author complicates our notions of kitsch by entangling it with the modern development of poetry. By analyzing the ballad-revival of the eighteenth-century and moving the reader through modernism and then right into the avant-garde, Tiffany shows us how poetic kitsch serves as a bridge between elite and vernacular cultures. In My Silver Planet, Tiffany has given us an ambitious genealogy of kitsch and its crucial relationship to diction, showing us how language itself complicates class distinctions, divides and unifies disparate cultural energies, and leaves us to wonder exactly what we mean – what are the social and political implications – when we describe anything as kitsch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

To read this collection is to enter into a world of dimly lit rooms with candle light shimmering off errant metallic surfaces. It is mystical, it is brutal, and it unflinchingly stares down a history that some folks block out to merely survive the day. Amnesiac, you become American. Historian, you remain a Jew. Your story begins: the book open like supplicant palms. Strike your words with an exacting hand. Rachel Mennies is that exacting and sure hand, guiding you from room to room through her family’s rich and difficult past. Oral history and folklore are necessary parts of our humanity. Stories live inside us and are altered by us, but remain “true.” These poems are true in the way that our skin knows the wind is blowing. The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards (Texas Tech University Press, 2014) does more than document realities, it brings itself to live in the speaker’s family as an entity, a gentle presence that should remain unstirred but revered. This text will live many lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

When Xu Lizhi committed suicide on September 30, 2014, he left a substantial body of work for his brief 24 years. In his poetry, he displayed an awareness that haunted him and now haunts us. He was a factory worker for the infamous Foxconn who produces most of the world’s iPhones. The bleak reality and gray landscape that Xu Lizhi inhabited in his work feels other-worldly and rare. But he is not an anomaly. The sad truth is that his poems could have been written by many different workers spread out over many nations. As well as setting his social media to post of “A New Day” after his passing, he leaves us with these final thoughts: I want to take another look at the ocean, behold the vastness of tears from half a lifetime I want to climb another mountain, try to call back the soul that I’ve lost I want to touch the sky, feel that blueness so light But I can’t do any of this, so I’m leaving this world We have entered a time of global awareness and it is coming through in our art. The movement, once again towards Social Realism, is art’s way of having us pay attention to something entering our collective consciousness. In a virtual roundtable, myself, Mark Nowak, Shengqing Wu, and Rodrigo Toscano come together to discuss Xu Lizhi’s poetry, craft, and the life he drew from. We also talk about the state of labor poetry and from where the next surge of poets may be emerging. The terrible question is, if Xi Lizhi had not killed himself, would we even know that this poet and these poems existed? Would they call out so loudly if not from the darkness? Pertinent Links: https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/11/12/the-haunting-poetry-of-a-chinese-factory-worker-who-committed-suicide/ http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2014/11/xu-lizhi-1990-2014-poet-and-foxconn-worker/ http://www.businessinsider.com/foxconn-factory-workers-suicide-poems-2014-11 Accidental Death of a Poet Xu Lizhi’s “Sina” (Chinese Equivalent to Twitter) http://www.weibo.com/u/1766211094?sudaref=www.google.com.hk Another Chinese Poet to look out for: Sunset by Zheng Xiaoqiong translated by Jonathan Stalling and Xian Liqiang Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

I won’t say Ailish Hopper‘s collection Dark~Sky Society (New Issues Press, 2014) is “about” anything because that would do it a disservice. These poems are human. They move like legs on a street, like a mind at work that calls you to ruminate with it. Because we can’t understand everything, we have to be comfortable in that space of being unsure. Hopper calls it “Art out of Ignorance” and I agree, but wonder if it is not also “Art out of a Refusal to Misunderstand.” It is not easy to stay in an uncomfortable space until you hit on a truth. It is also difficult to accept silence as a part of communication but this poet does and what she has discovered, she shares with us in this collection. “Dark Sky Society” does not see its own bravery. It does not draw attention to its confrontation of everything “place” can mean. And it does not apologize. The poems implicate themselves, and in turn implicate anyone who has ever dared to wonder, “How and why does our world work in this way?” I strongly encourage our listeners to pick up a copy of this collection to witness the ways in which Hopper reminds us that the song, the visuals, and the voice of the poem can engage the senses in a brilliance of stimuli and, in turn, the mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

About twenty years ago, I heard William Stafford read his poetry for about twenty minutes. For a young aspiring writer like I was then, he was mesmerizing, a mix of poetic energy and grandfatherly wisdom, with a high-spirited charm. I think it was the first poetry reading that I attended in which I realized that poetry didn’t have to be solemn and ponderous to be profound.  All of us in the audience laughed a lot. And we were moved. It was only after the reading, after I’d said how enjoyable I found Stafford, that some bitter professor-type said something like, “You know, that’s just his shtick. He’s a much darker poet.” I was troubled, and the remark sent me into Stafford’s work to see if it was true. I was happy to discover the same joy in Stafford’s poetry as I’d experienced in hearing him read, but there was more to it. His was a complex vision, and, to this day, I can recall lines of his that I read over two decades ago. I’m not alone in this experience of feeling as though Stafford’s presence and poems haunt me. Readers sent letters to Stafford by the thousands, and his fellow poets responded to him in life and in verse, though not always with praise. In honor of what would have been Stafford’s hundredth birthday in 2014, editor Becca J.R. Lachman has gathered together a collection of these poems. A Ritual to Read Together (Woodley Press, 2014) offers us an intimate portrait of Stafford’s legacy, from his abiding sense of place to his promotion of nonviolence to his work as a mentor and teacher. The collection takes its title from one of Stafford’s poems about the importance of listening to one another, of telling our stories. It opens: If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. I sat down with Becca to chat about her experience of assembling an anthology under the star of Stafford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry