Good contemporary poetry for beginners? I never got into it, but want to find some recent gems that really sing.

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Kathleen Jordan · Answer

Wind in a Box: Love this stirring book of poems by Terrance Hayes. Side tea: he was rumored to date Padma Lakshmi?

Kathleen Jordan · Answer

Just Like St. Peter (prose poem by Richard Garcia): All time favorite.

Catherine Davis · Answer

The Haiku Year: Seven friends (including Michael Stype, Douglas A. Martin, and Grant Lee Phillips) make a pact to write a haiku a day as a way to keep in touch. Captures everyday moments from the exquisite to the mundane. Profane, funny, sad, and so much unexpected beauty.

patio furniture

where we laughed

now covered in snow

D · Answer

Spit Temple by Cecilia Vicuña: how could i forget: anything by cecilia vicuña?

D · Answer

I Need Music by Anaïs Duplan: (One more, sorry, I really love poetry.) Anything by Anäis Duplan is exquisitely written and worth some time. And I often learn about artists and musicians that I was not aware of, since ekphrasis is their form.

D · Answer

We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics: Maybe you can figure out what kind of poetry you like by picking up an anthology? I like this one, but there are tons. Even picking an anthology might help to narrow down a niche to swim in for a while.

D · Answer

She of the Mountains by Vivek Shraya: Not technically poetry, but it reads like prose poetry. One of the most gorgeous QT love stories through the lens of mythology that I've read in a while. Might help to dip a toe into the poetic world through lyrical prose?

D · Answer

"Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking" by Tan Lin: also quite structuralist but kathy acker-esque in process (i.e., appropriated or found text); I haven't stopped thinking about this book since I read it in 2015-ish?

D · Answer

Blood Marrow Oolong Ivory by Rin Kim: Published by the excellent press, GenderFail:

“Blood, Marrow, Oolong, Ivory” is a bow. My lips are the arrows. I pour plum wine over paper and lick the pages until I am drunk on the substance. This publication is about sleeping with grief and waking up with pleasure. This publication is an orchid door. This publication is an annihilation of ritual. This publication is an altar. This publication is about when I awoke a fish and they took off my scales by the riverbed. This publication is about my mother, about my chest, about god, about power, about vulnerability. I want you to read it and I want you to taste the ingredients when they serve me fresh, hot, on a jade slab: blood, marrow, oolong, ivory."

D · Answer

Mucus in My Pineal Gland by Juliana Huxtable: for the feral (you know who you are)

D · Answer

Plans for Sentences by Renee Gladman: architecturally attuned poetry which expands the term to include text as drawing / drawing as text

here's a snippet from a Rumpus review:

"For those unfamiliar, it helps to think of Gladman’s work as engaging the imagination the way an architect approaches three-dimensional space with a two-dimensional blueprint. Her art is all about blurring or renegotiating where we draw the line—between writing and drawing, seeing and reading, between knowing and not-knowing, and, by extension, between social constructs. Through the poem-drawings in her newest collection from Wave Books, Plans for Sentences, this latest installment follows up the 2016 book of drawn-writings Prose Architectures as Gladman continues “using the space and time of drawing to explore more deeply the impact of blackness, futurity, and moving/erupting architectures on topographies of the sentence.”

These will set something at the back of something and make it larger; what is smallest

will be at the forefront but also below. These will bend, will contort. They will grain

These sentences will dome the thought; they will make complex gestures and grain on a

curve. They will set memories in overlapping modes of slope and cover, making hollows. (FIG 12. p. 25)"

Brandi · Answer

I Hope This Finds You Well: Poems (Pam): Re-reccing this- Love love love her poems. Her other book, What Kind of a Woman, is great too.

Soleil · Answer

Ten Bridges I've Burnt by Brontez Purnell: One of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in recent years. 10 Bridges I’ve Burnt by Brontez Purnell. I recommend listening to the audio book if you don’t enjoy reading poetry.

I’ve linked an interview with Purnell as I think he sells the book better than I do–

“It’s always nice when some older person says to you, honey, you’re just enough”… “even the trash gets picked up.”

Soleil · Answer

I Must Be Living Twice by Eileen Myles: Eileen Myles is one of my favorite poets. This collection isn’t exactly recent, but it’s a good introduction to their work! They still publish new poems, but their recent work is a little more experimental.

They also have a novel, Chelsea Girls, about growing up as a queer kid in Boston and then living in New York in the 70s. And Afterglow, a memoir about their rescue dog, written from the perspective of the dog.

Tbh I recommend listening to their audiobooks because the tone and sense of humor comes across so clearly when you hear their voice.

🫰

Maryn · Answer

Poetry is Not a Luxury Instagram: This account on Instagram is a great place to start! They have a book as well if you're not on IG.