2015 Poetry Books We Love

From the Split This Rock Family:

So many spectacular books of poetry of provocation and witness are now appearing in print each year we can’t keep up. Some of those same books are winning the major prizes and being reviewed everywhere. It’s a stunning shift in the literary landscape and one Split This Rock is proud to have played a role in helping to bring about.

Rather than publish another list of Recommended Books that tries to take stock of the whole field, Split This Rock Executive Director Sarah Browning asked a number of Splitistas to send her the titles of 2015 books they loved which haven’t received the attention their champions think they deserve. We are thrilled to put a spotlight on some gems. 

Special thanks to nominators Francisco Aragón, Lawrence-Minh Davis, Aracelis Girmay, Joseph O. Legaspi, E. Ethelbert Miller, Naomi Shihab Nye, Melissa Tuckey, and Joshua Weiner.

(You can read Recommended Books Lists of 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011 on Blog This Rock.)

We urge you to buy from your local independent book store, directly from the publisher (we’ve linked to their websites below), or from Powells.com, a union shop. Remember books, an ancient artform, make great gifts year-round!

Here, Then: Spectacular Books of 2015

Trouble Sleeping, Abdul Ali (New Issues Press)

The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, William Archilla (Red Hen Press)

Ozone Journals, Peter Balakian (University of Chicago Press)

Chord, Rick Barot (Sarabande Books)

The Spectral Wilderness, Oliver Bendorf (Kent State University Press)

Bastards of the Reagan Era, Reginald Dwayne Betts (Four Way Books)

Ghost River, Trevino L. Brings Plenty (The Backwaters Press)

Redbone, Mahogany L. Browne (Willow Books)

Furious Dusk, David Campos (University of Notre Dame Press)

The Book of Silence: Manhood as a Pseudoscience, Rasheed Copeland (Sargent Press)

String Theory, Jenny Yang Cropp (Mongrel Empire Press)

Honest Engine, Kyle G. Dargan (University of Georgia Press)

Cornrows and Cornfields, celeste doaks (Wrecking Ball Press, UK)

Lilith’s Demons, Julie R. Enszer (A Midsummer Night’s Press)

The Gaffer, Celeste Gainey (Arktoi Book/Red Hen)

Toys Made of Rock, José B. González (Bilingual Review Press)

Life of the Garment, Deborah Gorlin (Bauhan Publishing) 

Lighting the Shadow, Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Four Way Books)

A Crown for Gumecindo, Laurie Ann Guerrero (Aztlan LibrePress)

Hemisphere, Ellen Hagan (Triquarterly)

The Diary of a K-Drama Villain, Min Kang (Coconut Books)

Ban en Banlieue, Bhanu Kapil (Nightboat Books)

Visiting Indira Gandhi's Palmist, Kirun Kapur (ElixirPress)

Steep Tea, Jee Leong Koh (Carcanet Press Ltd.)

Boy with Thorn, Rickey Laurentiis (University of Pittsburgh Press)

The Darkening Trapeze, Larry Levis (Graywolf)

Life In a Box is a Pretty Life, Dawn Lundy Martin (Nightboat Books)

Yearling, Lo Kwa Mei-en (Alice James Books)

Sand Opera, Philip Metres (Alice James Books)

The Pink Box, Yesenia Montilla (Willow Books)

The Open Eye, Lenard D. Moore (Mountains and Rivers Press, 30^th Anniversary Edition)

The Siren World, Juan J. Morales (Lithic Press)

My Seneca Village, Marilyn Nelson (Namelos)

Silent Anatomies, Monica Ong (Kore Press)

Beauty Is Our Spiritual Guernica, Mario Santiago Papasquiaro, trans. Cole Heinowitz (Commune Editions)

The Same-Different, Hannah Sanghee Park (LSU Press)

She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks, M. Nourbese Philip (Wesleyan University Press, rerelease of 1989 classic, with a foreword by Evie Shockley)

Radio Heart: Or, How Robots Fall Out of Love, Margaret Rhee (Finishing Line Press)

Twelve Stations, Tomasz Różycki, translated by Bill Johnston (Zephyr)

Le Animal & Other Creatures, Metta Sáma (MIEL)

Trafficke, Susan Tichy (Ahsahta Press)

The Yellow Door, Amy Uyematsu (Red Hen Press)

Farther Traveler, Ronaldo Wilson (Counterpath Press)

Crevasse, Nicholas Wong (Kaya Press)

Naturalism, Wendy Xu (Brooklyn Arts Press)

100 Chinese Silences, Timothy Yu (Les Figues Press)

Anthologies

The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, edited by Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Nate Marshall (Haymarket Books)

Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia, edited by Paul Nelson, George Stanley, Barry McKinnon, Nadine Maestas (Leaf Press)

Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, edited by Brett Fletcher Lauer, Lynn Melnick (Viking)

Writing Down the Walls: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices, edited by Helen Klonaris, Amir Rabiyah (Trans-Genre Press)

Critical Writings

Outside the Margins: Literary Commentaries, Roberto Bonazzi (Wings Press)

I Will Say This Exactly One Time: Essays, D. Gilson (Sibling Rivalry Press)

Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation, Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie (Grand Concourse Press)

Poem of the Week: celeste doaks

         

Single Twin Band Crush

--inspired by Joe Millar's Losers and Winners

Aaron and Anita, the first real twins I ever personally knew,

drum majored our ragged band in high school called--

the Marching LaSalle Lions. Anita was the outgoing,

mouthy one, but I was star-struck by Aaron, the brooder.

I adored his strange pink olivey skin--always tan,

even in bitter Midwest winters--and his black spikey hair.

Of course those were the late 80's, and the whole world reeled

from Reaganomics, bad pop icons like Robert Palmer and his red-lipped

dames, and the Challenger crashed down on us like hail pelting

car hoods. Even my parents cautiously skated on the thin ice

of their marriage. No music could change America's forecast then.

But when Aaron coached me on flute, he calmed this confusing

world. He was the one who taught me the crescendos and intermezzos

of John Philip Sousa. As the world stammered on off-beat,

he was the one teaching me delicate rhythms

of quarter & eighths marching on regardless.

-celeste doaks 

  

Used by permission.

Poet and journalist celeste doaks is the recipient of a 2012 Lucille Clifton Scholarship to attend Squaw Valley Writers Workshop. Her work has garnered a variety of accolades including the 2009 Academy of American Poets Graduate Prize and the 2010 AWP WC&C Scholarship; she has also been awarded residencies at Atlantic Center of the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her journalism has appeared in the Huffington Post, Village Voice, Time Out New York, and QBR (Quarterly Black Book Review). Celeste received her MFA from North Carolina State University in 2010 and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective(CAAWC). Her poems have been published in multiple on-line and print publications such as Asheville Poetry Review, Obsidian, Beltway Poetry Quarterly,and forthcoming in the new anthology Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. Doaks currently teaches creative writing at Morgan State University.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive. 

January Sunday Kind of Love: celeste doaks & Tess Taylor

8th Anniversary
Sunday Kind of Love
Featuring

celeste doaks &
Tess Taylor 

    

   

Sunday January 19, 2014

5-7pm

Busboys and Poets

2021 14th St. NW
Washington, DC 20009

Hosted by

Sarah Browning & Katy Richey
$5 online or at the door

As always, open mic follows!

Co-Sponsored by Busboys and Poets

& Split This Rock

Poet and journalist celeste doaks is the recipient of a 2012 Lucille Clifton Scholarship to attend Squaw Valley Writers Workshop. Her work has garnered a variety of accolades including the 2009 Academy of American Poets Graduate Prize and the 2010 AWP WC&C Scholarship; she has also been awarded residencies at Atlantic Center of the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her journalism has appeared in the Huffington Post,Village Voice,Time Out New York, and QBR (Quarterly Black Book Review). Celeste received her MFA from North Carolina State University in 2010 and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective(CAAWC). Her poems have been published in multiple on-line and print publications such as Asheville Poetry Review, Obsidian, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and forthcoming in the new anthology Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. Doaks currently teaches creative writing at Morgan State University.

Tess Taylor's chapbook, The Misremembered World, was selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America's inaugural chapbook fellowship, and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Boston Review, Harvard Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and other places. She reviews poetry for NPR's All Things Considered. In The Forage House, her first full length book, she examines sometimes painful family and national histories -- looking at what such stories contain, and what they leave out. The San Francisco Chronicle called The Forage House "stunning." The Oxford American says, "On their own, the poems are visceral, densely detailed, and frequently playful... Read together, in order, the details are illuminated by context and gain historical sweep." Taylor has received awards and fellowships from MacDowell, Headlands Center for the Arts, and The International Center for Jefferson Studies. She now lives in El Cerrito, California.

Poem of the Week: celeste doaks

 

American Herstory       

   

Tell them it's always under attack. Tell them there's no cure

for the disease, or answer to the riddle. Tell them you asked many

before you, some who won, some who lost.

You consulted Assata, Roe vs. Wade, Harriet and Jocelyn Elders

to no avail. Her words on contraception twisted into a bitter pretzel.

The bits broken off, used to destroy her.

Tell them its always under attack, its predators everywhere. They lurk  

behind Mississippi clinics or around Georgetown blocks dressed

in blue uniform. Tell them you have the cure, somewhere at home,

deep in your cabinets, mixed in a mason jar, Don't tell them

it consists of breast milk, dreams, butterflies, civil rights marches,

burned bras, a piece of Madame CJ Walker's hair, prayers,

Ameila Earhart's drive, hot-water cornbread, and Sally Ride's fearlessness.

Lie to them, tell them it's rosemary oil, then bottle it. Sell it

to every woman in America who will drink it. Then watch all

the piranhas disappear.

 

-Celeste Doaks   

Used by permission.      

Poet and journalist celeste doaks received a 2012 Lucille Clifton Scholarship to attend Squaw Valley Writers Workshop. Her journalism has appeared in the Huffington Post, Village Voice, Time Out New York and many other publications. Her most recent poetry is forthcoming in Tidal Basin Review and Bayou Magazine. Doaks received her MFA from North Carolina State University, and currently teaches creative writing at Morgan State University. You can follow her at @thedoaksgirl on Twitter.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.    

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