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: Aracelis Girmay

Break

When the boys are carnivals

we gather round them in the dark room

& they make their noise while drums

ricochet against their bodies & thin air

below the white ceiling hung up like a moon

& it is California, the desert. I am driving in a car,

clapping my hands for the beautiful windmills,

one of whom is my brother, spinning,

on a hillside in the garage

with other boys he'll grow old with, throw back.

How they throw back their bodies

on the cardboard floor, then spring-to, flying

like the heads of hammers hitting strings

inside of a piano.

     Again, again.

This is how they fall & get back up. One

who was thrown out by his father. One

who carries death with him like a balloon

tied to his wrist. One whose heart will break.

One whose grandmother will forget his name.

One whose eye will close. One who stood

beside his mother's body in a green hospital. One.

Kick up against the air to touch the earth.

See him fall, then get back up.

Then get back up.

***

From The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (Haymarket Books, 2015). Used with permission. Photo by Sheila Griffin.

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Aracelis Girmay is the author of the collage-based picture book changing, changing, and the poetry collections Teeth and Kingdom Animalia. Girmay is on the faculty of Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts and Drew University's low-residency MFA program. For the past few years, she has been studying texts and other materials that, through form, language(s), diction, and gesture, perform and think about place and loss of place (or displacement), and what this sometimes has to do with the sea.

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Please feel free to share Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this post, including this request. Thanks! If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.

Poem of the Week: Jamila Woods

Blk Girl Art

--after Amiri Baraka

Poems are bullshit unless they are eyeglasses, honey

tea with lemon, hot water bottles on tummies. I want

poems my grandma wants to tell the ladies at church

about. I want orange potato words soaking in the pot

til their skins fall off, words you burn your tongue on,

words on sale two for one, words that keep my feet dry.

I want to hold a poem in my fist in the alley just in case.

I want a poem for dude at the bus stop. Oh you can’t talk

ma? Words to make the body inside my body less invisible.

Words to teach my sister how to brew remedies in her mouth.

Words that grow mama’s hair back. Words to detangle the kitchen.

I won’t write poems unless they are an instruction manual, a bus

card, warm shea butter on elbows, water, a finger massage to the scalp,

a broomstick sometimes used for cleaning and sometimes
                                                                          to soar.

* * *

From The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (Haymarket Books, 2015). Used with permission. Photo by Reginald Eldridge.

* * *

Jamila Woods is a poet, singer, and teaching artist from Chicago, IL. She the Associate Artistic Director of Young Chicago Authors and a founding member of YCA’s Teaching Artist Corps. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poetry has been published by Poetry Magazine, MUZZLE, and Third World Press. Her first chapbook entitled The Truth About Dolls was released in 2012 by New School Poetics Press. Jamila is a member of the Dark Noise Collective of poets & educators of color. She is also the front-woman of soul-duo band M&O, whose music has been featured by Okayplayer, JET, and Ebony Magazine. For more info visit jamilawoodswrites.com & follow @duhmilo. 

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Please feel free to share Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this post, including this request. Thanks! If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.