Patricia Lockwood, Agate Head/Stone Soup (Penguin Books) — published in NER 47.1
“Across Agate Head / Stone Soup there are countless moments that remind you that her poetic voice is unique: charming, whimsical, intimate; able to deliver images of great beauty, piercing philosophical insights and glimpses into a creative life behind the public persona.” — The Guardian
TR Brady, Return Signal (Fonograf Editions) — published in NER 43.3
“Return Signal is transmission. Is diversion as determination. Is obsession as communication. Transness and desire are catalogued in daydreams and real dreams and distraction. Testosterone daydreams and phantoms reimagine queer obsession in elegies and lyric sequences.” — Fonograf Editions
Avia Tadmor, Song in Tammuz (Tupelo Press) —published in NER 39.1
“Bringing together story, memory, and history, Song in Tammuz reckons with how the present is always weighted by the past. With our current moment so darkened by crisis and grief, Avia Tadmor insists on a countervailing dignity and illumination” — Rick Barot, author of Moving the Bones
Josh Weil, What Came West (Doubleday) — published in NER 27.2
“Josh Weil has created that rare thing: a perfect literary western. He joins the good company of Thomas Berger, Charles Portis, and Larry McMurtry but brings his own vision to the American West. . . . A tour de force . . . by a writer at the height of his power.” —Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
Kamau Brathwaite, The Arrivants (New Directions) — published most recently in NER 09.3
“The Arrivants exemplified Brathwaite’s ambition to create a distinctively Caribbean form of poetry, which would celebrate Caribbean voices and language, as well as African and Caribbean rhythms evoking Ghanaian talking drums, calypso, reggae, jazz and blues.” — The Guardian
Marge Piercy, The Hour of My Death (Sibylline Press) — published in NER 15.4
“[The collection] is a personal narrative in the Japanese Zuihitsu literary form that encompasses diary-style entries, recipes, gardening advice and her luminous poetry, all detailing a joyful year of living in her resurrected old age.” — Sibylline Press
Ellen Hinsey, Anatomy of the Eclipse (Arrowsmith Press) — NER international correspondent and curator of Literature & Democracy
“From the war in Eastern Europe to the spread of violence and lawlessness, Hinsey’s new volume tracks the danger signals of a world advancing towards tyranny’s edge-light. . . These poems also brace, embrace, and fortify, probing our potential for renewal through affirmation and compassion.” — Arrowsmith Press
Benjamin S. Grossberg, When You Read a Novel the Dead Would Like (Cavankerry Press) — published most recently in NER 38.1
“These are poems of memory and mortality . . . with a poet’s ear for subtle music and a storyteller’s instinct for heartrending detail, Grossberg explores the essence of loss and love. This is a powerful new volume from one of our essential poets.” — Bruce Snider, author of Blood Harmony