Throughout 2021, CLMP has been gathering monthly lists of the books forthcoming from our member presses. We’re excited to share this year-end roundup of dozens of poetry collections published in 2021 by independent literary publishers! Read our year-end roundups for fiction, nonfiction, and other genres as well!
Master Suffering by CM Burroughs
Tupelo Press | January 1, 2021
According to Simone Muench, this poetry collection “often employing the epistolary as a form of elegy… investigates the labyrinthine dimensions of desire, mourning, faith, and misogyny.”
The Earliest Witnesses by G.C. Waldrep
Tupelo Press | January 1, 2021
According to Rachel Galvin, Waldrep’s latest poetry collection “possesses Waldrep’s characteristic spirituality and keenly seeing eye, but these poems show a new vulnerability, a wrestling with mortality and the ubiquity of war.”
Animal Days by Joshua Beckman
Wave Books | January 5, 2021
Beckman’s collection of “carefully assembled poetic fragments seeks to elucidate the synthetic reality of being sick and being medicated.”
Stay Safe by Emma Hine
Sarabande Books | January 5, 2021
According to Jenny Xie, this debut poetry collection features “poems of dark lyricism, ones commanding our attention to the body at risk: its hidden danger zones, its collisions and impacts, its relentless hurtle forward.”
the she said dialogues: flesh memory by Akilah Oliver
Nightboat Books | January 5, 2021
This reprint of Oliver’s 1999 poetry collection “investigates the non-linear synapses between desire, memory, blackness (as both a personal identity and a non-essentialist historical notion), sexuality and language.”
Vibratory Milieu by Carrie Hunter
Nightboat Books | January 5, 2021
This work of lyric collage is “a study of identity and its abstraction, formation, and analysis through interaction with texts of all kinds: poems, film, music, dream, and friendship.”
God of Nothingness by Mark Wunderlich
Graywolf Press | January 12, 2021
Wunderlich’s fourth poetry collection is, according to Ada Limón, “an argument not for beauty but for a clear-eyed resilience.”
Visit to an Extinct City by Teresa Carson
Deerbrook Editions | January 20, 2021
First in the series The Argument of Time and presented in English and Italian, this Ostian poem “holds a fresh, personal lens to a seldom-seen, venerable ghost-town and archaeological site.”
The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void by Jackie Wang
Nightboat Books | January 26, 2021
This debut poetry collection is a “personal index of dreams with its scenes of solidarity and resilience, interpersonal conflict and outlaw jouissance.”
MUSIC FOR EXILE by Nehassaiu deGannes
Tupelo Press | February 1, 2021
The poems in this debut collection “syncretize a host of lyrical, received and invented forms to beckon a ‘mythic assemblage,’ an aggregation of personal and historical losses, intimate and en masse.”
The Readiness by Alan Gillis
Wake Forest University Press | February 1, 2021
Gillis’s poetry collection “moves fluently among various modes of poetic expression: the lyric, one of his most beautiful and assured; the gritty, one of his most familiar; and the comic, one of his most form-splitting.”
Wonderama by Catherine Doty
CavanKerry Press | February 2, 2021
Wonderama is “a collection of cinematic, surprising, and at times harrowing poems that captures 1960s Paterson, New Jersey, as experienced by the poorest, most vulnerable children living there.”
No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body by Asiya Wadud
Nightboat Books | February 9, 2021
“Drawing on the multi-disciplinary performances of Okwui Okpokwasili,” this poetry collection “evokes experiences of transmission to explore methods and modes of continuum, endurance, claustrophobia and stillness.”
Prometeo by C. Dale Young
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
Young’s latest poetry collection is an “unflinching reckoning with the traumas of one’s life and those inherited through a history of exacted injustices.”
Everything by Andrea Cohen
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
In her new poetry collection, Cohen “approaches the idea of the macro through an elastic inquiry of the micro” and “examines logic through analogy.”
Sweetgum & Lightning by Rodney Terich Leonard
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
This debut poetry collection is, according to Mark Bibbins, “a cascade of image and song, charged by a voice that can pivot from reverence to gleeful vulgarity inside a single line.”
The Art of Fiction by Kevin Prufer
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
Prufer’s eighth poetry collection is an “investigation, performed through storytelling, of the constructed beliefs of society and individuals.”
What Happens Is Neither by Angela Narciso Torres
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
According to Tim Seibles, in this poetry collection Torres “has jimmied the lock to a house of intricate family memory and sumptuous wisdom.”
Renditions by Reginald Gibbons
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
According to Ilya Kaminsky, “this one-man chorus sings the way Pasternak recommended when he whispered that poets should go across the borders, smashing those borders.”
Reliquary by Abigail Wender
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
Wender’s debut poetry collection is “an introspective lyric on how the opiate crisis alters families and futures.”
Debris by Jonathan Wells
Four Way Books | February 15, 2021
This poetry collection “offers a stark foil between the lyric world of the poem and an outside world that is violent, hard, and relentless.”
Women’s Work by Madeleine Barnes
Tolsun Books | February 16, 2021
Women’s Work is “a hybrid poetry chapbook that treads the frontier between the handmade and the digital.”
when animals are animals by Betsy Johnson
Mayapple Press | February 19, 2021
According to Peter Grandbois, Johnson’s third book of poetry contains “poems that speak the truth of parables.”
Returning the Sword to the Stone by Mark Leidner
Fonograf Editions | February 23, 2021
Leidner’s poetry collection is “simultaneously profound and irreverent, in the same way that the world is flat as we walk and round as we live.”
Ashore by Laurel Nakanishi
Tupelo Press | March 1, 2021
According to Campbell McGrath, Nakanishi’s debut poetry collection is “a document of lyrical witness steeped in the language, history and mythology of her native Hawaii.”
The Magpie & the Child by Catriona Clutterbuck
Wake Forest University Press | March 1, 2021
This poetry collection “is filled with self-examination, suffering, remembered conversations with the living child and very real ones with the dead, each of which record the steps of the emotional journey.”
Ova Completa by Susana Thénon
Ugly Duckling Presse | March 1, 2021
Translated by Rebekah Smith, this collection of Thénon’s poetics “expands to incorporate all it touches—classical and popular culture, song lyrics and vulgarities, incoherence and musicality.”
Except for This Unseen Thread by Ra’ad Abdulqadir
Ugly Duckling Presse | March 1, 2021
Translated by Mona Kareem, this is the first full-length English publication of Ra’ad’s poetry, which is “hailed for its cinematic portrait of Iraq under sanctions—the bread queues, busy cemeteries, empty schools, and the impossible departures and returns.”
The Supposed Huntsman by Katie Fowley
Ugly Duckling Presse | March 1, 2021
This debut poetry collection draws “inspiration from Brothers Grimm fairy tales and troubadour tradition” and “creates spaces that blur the lines of gender, species, and self.”
Late Human by Jean Day
Ugly Duckling Presse | March 1, 2021
Late Human “is a collection of tragi-comic poems on lateness, belatedness, Weltschmerz, and borrowing (with a nod to Ernest Mandel’s 1975 tome on the twilight of capitalism).”
Skirted by Julie Marie Wade
The Word Works | March 1, 2021
According to Rajiv Mohabir, the poems in this collection “glisten with precise and honest lines that chart how their queer speaker measures and crosses water in all its incarnations.”
West : Fire : Archive by Iris Jamahl Dunkle
The Center for Literary Publishing | March 5, 2021
According to Mary Szybist, West : Fire : Archive is “a riveting exploration of the porous borders between archive and dream in which snapshots become portals, graves become gates, and new myths are forged out of grief.”
The Truffle Eye by Vaan Nguyen
Zephyr Press | March 9, 2021
In this debut poetry collection translated from the Hebrew by Adriana X. Jacobs, Nguyen “reflects on how our lives take shape in the daily migrations we make between lovers, family, work, and the places we call home.”
In the Antarctic Circle by Dennis James Sweeney
Autumn House Press | March 15, 2021
Winner of the 2020 Rising Writer Prize, selected by Yona Harvey, this collection of hybrid narrative prose poems explores “the Antarctica of domestic disharmony.”
No One Leaves the World Unhurt by John Foy
Autumn House Press | March 15, 2021
Winner of the 2020 Donald Justice Poetry Prize, selected by J. Allyn Rosser, this collection “is a tour de force of formal poetry, offering a blend of wit, cleverness, and deftness.”
The Dream Women Called by Lori Wilson
Autumn House Press | March 15, 2021
The poems in Wilson’s second poetry collection “create multifaceted portraits, particularly of relationships between mothers and daughters.”
when the signals come home by Jordan E. Franklin
Switchback Books | March 15, 2021
This debut poetry collection was selected by Prageeta Sharma as winner of the 2020 Gatewood Prize; Sharma writes, “The deep ferocity in these poems is rich, particularly in how the speaker manages to address racial inequity.”
Gorilla by Christine Hamm
The Word Works | March 15, 2021
Hamm’s “surreal series of prose-poems, harmonic and jarring, pops the reader into a world where the animal is a danger-suit we might all don, or is a force of chaos that breaks families, or America’s unconscious hatred of women.”
Syntax Flies Into Startle by Sally Naylor
The Poetry Box | March 15, 2021
Naylor’s poetry collection is “an unabashed journey on the nature of orgasm.”
BINT by Ghinwa Jawhari
Radix Media | March 19, 2021
Jawhari’s debut collection, a winner of the inaugural Own Voices Chapbook Prize, is “a meditation on the Arabic word ‘bint’ (بنت), or ‘girl.'”
PAX by Annie Lighthart
Fernwood Press | March 19, 2021
The poems in this collection “ask us to wake to our own remarkable lives and our undeniable connections, to look with a steady eye at the demands of love.”
Hearing by Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino
Litmus Press | March 22, 2021
Hearing is “the long-awaited second book in a series of collaborations by Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino organized around each of the five senses.”
Eclogues in a Mustard Seed Garden by Glenn Mott
Turtle Point Press | March 23, 2021
According to Yunte Huang, in this collection “Mott’s lyrical antics embody poetry at its most earnest and parodic, a deadly potion stolen from the fountain of imagination.”
Viscera Americana by Abigail Swoboda
Thirty West Publishing House | March 26, 2021
According to Andrew Ervin, this debut poetry chapbook is crafted “with love when that love is earned, with malice when it becomes necessary, and, at all times, with nuance and great care.”
Creep Love by Michael Walsh
Autumn House Press | March 31, 2021
Walsh’s poetry collection “explores a family contending with a complex and ongoing crisis, the aftermath of which creates a shockwave that reverberates through these poems.”
Lucky Wreck: 15th Anniversary Edition by Ada Limón
Autumn House Press | March 31, 2021
This fifteenth-anniversary edition “includes a new introduction by the poet that reflects on the book and on how her writing practice has developed over time.”
Groundswell by Yanara Friedland
Essay Press | March 31, 2021
According to Daniel Borzutzky, Friedland’s collection of border narratives, rituals, and biographies is “a powerful, moving, eloquent and poignant fusion of documentary, poetry, and testimony.”
Present Tense Complex by Suphil Lee Park
Conduit Book and Ephemera | March 31, 2021
According to Bob Hicok, Suphil Lee Park’s poems “investigate, tear at, and adore physical and emotional dislocations, separations, and losses.”
Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere by Grisel Y. Acosta
Get Fresh Books Publishing | April 1, 2021
This poetry collection is “is a blueprint for Afro-Latinx adventurers who want to keep their sanity in a world that does not value the history or contributions of Black/Latinx women.”
Cleave by Darla Himeles
Get Fresh Books Publishing | April 1, 2021
The poems in Himeles’s debut collection “explore early trauma, various meanings and makings of home, and the struggle to conceive.”
As If By Magic: Selected Poems by Paula Meehan
Wake Forest University Press | April 1, 2021
In this new poetry collection, Meehan “moves from the feminist to the ecological, from the grittier urban spaces of the north side of center-city Dublin to the suburban spaces outside.”
The World to Come by David Keplinger
Conduit Books & Ephemera | April 1, 2021
According to Ilya Kaminsky, in these prose poems Keplinger “has an amazing sense of subtext—what is unsaid, in these pages, is perhaps even more important than what is said.”
The Wild Fox of Yemen by Threa Almontaser
Graywolf Press | April 6, 2021
Almontaser’s debut poetry collection is “a love letter to the country and people of Yemen, a portrait of young Muslim womanhood in New York after 9/11, and an extraordinarily composed examination of what it means to carry in the body the echoes of what came before.”
Pelted by Flowers by Kali Lightfoot
CavanKerry Press | April 6, 2021
According to Laura Foley, this poetry collection “is a lovely sweep through an existence often ‘pelted by flowers,’ finally achieving a readiness for the letting go, a well-earned acceptance, in her final contemplation, of what comes next.”
Waterbaby by Nikki Wallschlaeger
Copper Canyon Press | April 6, 2021
In her third collection, Wallschlaeger “turns to water―the natural element of grief―to trace history’s interconnected movements through family, memory, and day-to-day survival.”
This is Not About Love: Poems by Krystal A. Smith
BLF Press | April 6, 2021
In this poetry collection, Smith “explores the complexities of human emotion and relationships via memory, experience, and imagination.”
Blue-bird (bloo•burd) by Joanna Thomas
Milk & Cake Press | April 6, 2021
The poems in this chapbook, “written as lyrical, lovely dictionary entries,” exclude the letter b.
The Amateur Scientist’s Notebook by Jesse DeLong
Baobab Press | April 6, 2021
According to Joanna Klink, DeLong’s debut collection “tracks the intricacy of sunflowers, families, fishing rivers and particles, Idaho farms, chemicals, miners, birds.”
Mask for Mask by JD Scott
New Rivers Press | April 6, 2021
According to Cathy Park Hong, Scott’s debut poetry collection is “a magpie’s nest of verbal delights plucked from the late capitalist rituals of wellness, queer kitsch, and text-speak.”
Welcome to Sonnetville, New Jersey by Craig Morgan Teicher
BOA Editions | April 6, 2021
Structured around two sequences of sonnets, Teicher’s new poetry collection is “about entering middle age, raising a young family, sustaining a marriage, and taking care of a severely disabled child.”
In A Sentimental Mood by Ivana Bodrožic
Sandorf Passage | April 7, 2021
Bodrožic’s poetry collection is “emotional, but never woeful, deliberate, yet playful poetry capable of reaching both the highest and deepest registers of expression.”
Exhibitionist by Molly Cross-Blanchard
Coach House Books | April 12, 2021
Amber Dawn writes that in this debut poetry collection, Cross-Blanchard “places the erotic beside mundane so that both are transformed.”
The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems by Arthur Sze
Copper Canyon Press | April 13, 2021
This decades-spanning selection of Sze’s poetry is “an invitation to immerse in a visionary body of work, mapping the evolution of one of our finest American poets.”
The Complete Poems of San Juan de la Cruz
Milkweed Editions | April 13, 2021
Translated by María Baranda and Paul Hoover, this bilingual edition of San Juan de la Cruz’s poetry “engages with the journey of the soul through the darkest trenches of suffering and despair toward an enlightened spiritual connection with God.”
Skin by Robert VanderMolen
Milkweed Editions | April 13, 2021
VanderMolen’s poems “illuminate the cycles of human interaction alongside the slow-moving patterns of nature.”
Because the Sun by Sarah Burgoyne
Coach House Books | April 13, 2021
In this poetry collection, Burgoyne “considers the blazing sun as a material symbol of ambient violence—violence absorbed like heat and fired at the nearest victim.”
Be the Thing of Memory by Carrie Olivia Adams
Tolsun Books | April 13, 2021
In this poetry collection, Adams “excavates the stories of women—famous, forgotten, and ordinary—from history and enters into dialogue with them, giving voice to the continuity of experience and humanity that is our shared foundation.”
Catalogue d’oiseaux by Aaron Tucker
Book*hug Press | April 13, 2021
Tucker “recounts a year in the life of a couple separated by distance, carefully documenting time spent together and apart” in this new poetry collection.
How to Be Better by Being Worse by Justin Jannise
BOA Editions | April 13, 2021
Selected by Richard Blanco as winner of the 2019 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, Jannise’s debut poetry collection “freely indulges in harmless wickedness as its speaker grows in self-awareness.”
Sophia & Mister Walter Whitman by Penelope Scambly Schott
The Poetry Box | April 15, 2021
This chapbook offers “a delightful peek inside the mind of a dog through her often entertaining & insightful ‘conversations’ and adopted philosophies of her favorite poet.”
Bye Bye Blackbird by Doreen Stock
The Poetry Box | April 15, 2021
The poems in Stock’s chapbook about her mother “move in mythic time and through the moments of loss and conveyance that characterized this woman’s journey toward the end of her life.”
Italian Lesson by Dianalee Velie
The Poetry Box | April 15, 2021
Velie’s chapbook “celebrates the sights and sounds of Italy—explorations of the local food & drink, sightseeing expeditions, and the lively spirit of the Italian people.”
Duct-Taped Roses by Billeh Nickerson
Book*hug Press | April 15, 2021
In his latest poetry collection, Nickerson “shares heartbreaks and offers odes and elegies in reflections on family, community, life, and loss.”
Ballast by Linda Aldrich
Deerbrook Editions | April 15, 2021
According to Marcia Brown, in this poetry collection the Maine poet laureate “offers up luminous poems of awakenings over the many stages of a life.”
To a New Era by Joanna Fuhrman
Hanging Loose Press | April 15, 2021
Fuhrman’s sixth poetry collection is “a fearless blend of the real and the surreal, the political and the personal, all with the marks of her own kind of accelerated dizzying style.”
things seemed to be breaking by Stuart Kestenbaum
Deerbrook Editions | April 15, 2021
The poems in Kestenbaum’s new collection are, according to Maira Kalman, “beacons of tender, funny, minimalist illumination. ”
Harvest Time by Martin Willitts Jr.
Deerbrook Editions | April 18, 2021
According to Megan Merchant, this poetry collection is “an act of deep listening, and an ache of nostalgia that is tethered to simplicity.”
Water I Won’t Touch by Kayleb Rae Candrilli
Copper Canyon Press | April 20, 2021
Candrilli’s new poetry collection is “a life raft and a self-portrait, concerned with the vitality of trans people living in a dangerous and inhospitable landscape.”
I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World by Kendra DeColo
BOA Editions | April 20, 2021
The poems in this collection “interrogate patriarchal narratives about childbirth, postpartum healing, and motherhood through the lens of pop culture and the political zeitgeist.”
in the morning we are glass by Andra Schwarz
Zephyr Press | April 20, 2021
Schwarz’s “probing, unpunctuated poems take us into her native Lusatia, a region in Eastern Germany near the Polish and Czech borders that has undergone drastic changes from coal mining, politics, and demographic shifts.”
I Used to Be Korean by Jiwon Choi
Hanging Loose Press | April 26, 2021
According to Terrence Winch, this collection is full of “sharp-tongued poems, often levitating on their own buoyant wit” and “propelled by New York immigrant energy, which of course makes it quintessentially American.”
Dialogues with Rising Tides by Kelli Russell Agodon
Copper Canyon Press | April 27, 2021
In Agodon’s fourth collection, “each poem facilitates a humane and honest conversation with the forces that threaten to take us under.”
The Naomi Letters by Rachel Mennies
BOA Editions | April 27, 2021
Structured as an epistolary narrative, this poetry collection “chronicles the relationship between a woman speaker and Naomi, the woman she loves.”
Poem That Never Ends by Silvina López Medin
Essay Press | April 30, 2021
In this hybrid collection, López Medin “weaves together poems and family photos to explore the fragmentation of time, memory, and mother-child relationships.”
Proof Something Happened by Tony Trigilio
Marsh Hawk Press | May 1, 2021
Winner of the 2020 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize, Trigilio’s latest poetry collection is based on a legendary UFO encounter.
The Pact by Jennifer Militello
Tupelo Press | May 1, 2021
In her newest collection, Militello “confronts obsession, intimacy, and abuse” and “offers an indictment against affection and a portent against zeal.”
Where We Arrive by Thomas Mitchell
Lost Horse Press | May 1, 2021
According to Don Schofield, “Mitchell shows us in these hard earned poems that, in the face of aging, despair, and loss, and in a time when our whole existence has been turned upside down by a microscopic organism, we can still find moments of grace and harmony.”
I Will Not Name It Except To Say by Lee Sharkey
Tupelo Press | May 1, 2021
According to Janice Harrington, the poems in Sharkey’s latest collection range “from the pleasures of old love to improvisations on German Expressionism, family memory, a provocative spiritualism, and difficult history.”
Source Notes: Seventh Decade by Heather Tosteson
Wising Up Press | May 1, 2021
The poems in Tosteson’s collection, which also includes photographs, “move from public events to highly personal ones, both past and present.”
Forget Thee by Ian Dreiblatt
Ugly Duckling Presse | May 1, 2021
In Dreiblatt’s debut book of poetry, “an anonymous narrator ruminates on the end of the world, while conversing with various historic and literary figures from the ancient Mediterranean and Mesopotamian worlds.”
Upper Volta by Yanko González
Ugly Duckling Presse | May 1, 2021
Originally published in Chile and translated by Stephen Rosenshein, this poetry collection “gives voice to the voiceless, and exposes the underbelly of our own biases—the ways in which they manifest in everyday language and collective consciousness.”
Even Shorn by Isabel Duarte-Gray
Sarabande Books | May 1, 2021
Duarte-Gray’s debut poetry collection “mines local orature, family history, and folklore for the music of Western Kentucky, creating the sparse line breaks and the harsh syntax of the present.”
Hoarders by Kate Durbin
Wave Books | May 4, 2021
In this poetry collection, Durbin “deftly traces the associations between hoarding and collective US traumas rooted in consumerism and the environment.”
Deke Dangle Dive by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc
CavanKerry Press | May 4, 2021
This poetry collection “explores illness, fatherhood, brotherhood, and masculinity through ice hockey, contemporary culture, domestic life, and the natural world and considers how poems can speak to us and through us when all seems (or is) lost.”
Giant Moth Perishes by Geoffrey Nutter
Wave Books | May 4, 2021
The poems in Nutter’s sixth poetry collection offer “myriad delights in language and the imagination” and “teach us how to live in the world with curious attention.”
Etude for Belonging: Poems for Practicing Courage and Hope by Bethany Lee
Fernwood Press | May 7, 2021
This inspirational poetry collection contains “musings on galaxies and trillium, shipwrecks and spinning wheels, here where there is room for broken hearts, for healing, and for hope.”
Ross Sings Cheree & the Animated Dark by Ross J. Farrar
Deep Vellum | May 11, 2021
In his debut book of poetry, singer-songwriter Farrar “conjures a narrative voice that evokes Alan Vega of the band Suicide and other New York school artists as he contemplates life outside of music.”
The Beginning of Water by Tran Le Khanh
White Pine Press | May 15, 2021
According to Nguyen Quang Thieu, this poetry collection—translated by Bruce Weigl—”captures a universal essence, like a seed, evident in the poet’s attention to form, his precise use of images, his simplification of diction, and his powerfully compressed emotions.”
Under the Capsized Boat We Fly: New & Selected Poems by Gail Wronsky
White Pine Press | May 15, 2021
The poems in this collection of over four decades of Wronsky’s work “explore feminism, environmentalism, and mortality in language that is both multi-layered and musical.”
I Never Understood Religion Until I Learned Your Name by Hunter Hazelton
Tolsun Books | May 18, 2021
In this debut poetry collection, Hazelton “unravels a semi-autobiographical exploration of first queer love, the intensity of desire, and the existence of God in a heteronormative world.”
World Gone Zoom: Notes from the American Epicenter by David Belmont
The Poetry Box | May 18, 2021
Belmont’s latest book “takes us on a poetic journey through life under lockdown in New York City during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and the few months following, replete with political commentary, philosophical musings and musical references.”
Permanent Volta by Rosie Stockton
Nightboat Books | May 18, 2021
The poems in this collection are “love poems about how queer intimacies invent political and poetic forms, how gender deviance imagines post-sovereign presents and futures.”
Ticker by Mark Neely
Lost Horse Press | May 20, 2021
Neely’s third poetry collection “follows the life of its main character, Bruce, as he navigates marriage, children, aging parents, politics, race, religion, global catastrophe, and the irrelevance of middle age.”
Sufficient Emptiness by Marjorie Power
Deerbrook Editions | May 20, 2021
According to Amy Miller, the poems in Power’s latest collection “are not just about what we see and remember, but how we see and remember.”
A Looking-Glass for Traytors by Edward Foster
Marsh Hawk Press | May 21, 2021
According to the Brooklyn Rail, Foster’s poems “suspend themselves just above language, connotative of some understanding—perhaps common to all of us—that recedes at the brink of words.”
Imagine Us, The Swarm by Muriel Leung
Nightboat Books | May 25, 2021
This collection of essays in verse “contemplates vengeance, eschews forgiveness, and cultivates a desire for healing beyond the reaches of this present life.”
Between Us, Not Half a Saint by Rushi Vyas and Rajiv Mohabir
Gasher Press | May 30, 2021
The poems in this conversation between Vyas and Mohabir “call for an end to Islamophobia, caste violence, gender violence, and nationalist rhetoric.”
Listen My Friend, This Is the Dream I Dreamed Last Night by Cody-Rose Clevidence
The Song Cave | June 1, 2021
In this new poetry collection, Clevidence “layers the language of information with the language of the heart, constantly locating the connections between attention and perception.”
July by Kathleen Ossip
Sarabande Books | June 1, 2021
In her latest poetry collection, Ossip “meditates on our various responses to our country—whether ironic, infantile, righteous, or defeated.”
Demystifications by Miranda Mellis
Solid Objects | June 1, 2021
Mellis’s latest poetry collection, which “presents a utopian societal vision,” is “a circle of voices engaged in a public conversation whose subject is the transformation of knowledge into a collective organ.” In the poems, she asks, “What is the social command? Who hears it, and what do they hear?”
Bed by Elizabeth Metzger
Tupelo Press | June 1, 2021
Winner of the 2021 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, Metzger’s latest poetry collection examines “how life’s interruptions—illness or new motherhood, loss or lust—can lead us to intimate revelations with others and with our selves.”
A Temple for Tomorrows by John Jeffire
Aquarius Press | June 3, 2021
According to Jim Reese, Jeffire’s poetry collection is “an homage of blood, family, war—shake downs, masques of shame, rotary phones, doing time.”
Proof of Stake: An Elegy by Charles Valle
Fonograf Editions | June 10, 2021
This debut poetry collection focuses on “immigration, colonialism, and the death of the speaker’s infant daughter.”
Infinity Closet by Robert Campbell
Tolsun Books | June 15, 2021
In Campbell’s “acutely imagined coming-of-age lyrics, the queer body blooms into knife and forest pilgrim, robot and mystical storyteller.”
Our Insolvency by Jeremy Hoevenaar
Golias Books | June 20, 2021
The poems in Hoevenaar’s collection “register the seismic distortions that the regime of financialization has had on poetic activity and on daily life.”
Nightwork by Lauren Levin
Golias Books | June 20, 2021
Levin’s poetry collection “collects a series of long poems… against a backdrop of evolving thought practices, political action, and pulses of desire and daily life within a larger Bay Area community.”
The Ghettobirds by Bryant O’Hara
Frayed Edge Press | June 22, 2021
O’Hara’s collection includes “thirty works of speculative poetry that celebrate the ability of humanity to adapt to, surpass, and possibly transcend its environment and its origins.”
Grandfather’s Mandolin by Fran Markover
Passager Books | June 25, 2021
Grandfather’s Mandolin is a collection of poems “deeply rooted in family and what has come before.
Her Read by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth
Texas Review Press | June 30, 2021
A hybrid of poetry and visual art, Her Read is “an excavation of buried voices, a reclamation of bodies framed in gilt and an homage to those whose arts remain unsung.”
Eleven Miles to June by Ha Kiet Chau
Green Writers Press | July 30, 2021
This debut poetry collection “focuses on a woman’s journey from childhood to adulthood—her movements, her nuances in black and white, in technicolor and sound.”
Waving by Traci O’Dea
Assure Press | July 1, 2021
According to Richard Georges, this poetry collection is “a meditation on the body and the universal sea, of letting go and letting be, as preoccupied with the spiritual as the physical.”
Poetries by Georges Schehadé
The Song Cave | July 1, 2021
Translated by Austin Carder, this collection from the Egyptian-born, Lebanese-French poet is, according to Cole Swensen, “a text that thrives in its new language, radiating the brilliance of the freshly minted.”
Trapline by Caroline Goodwin
JackLeg Press | July 3, 2021
According to Donna de la Perrière, in the second edition of this debut poetry collection, “nature’s flux and torque are embodied in a language that is taut, luscious, and musical.”
Quilling Will by Alice-Catherine Jennings
Assure Press | July 7, 2021
In this poetry collection, Jennings “flips lines out of William Shakespeare’s sonnets into the memories and reflections of daily events.”
In the Zero of Sky by Tamra Plotnick
Assure Press | July 7, 2021
The poems in Plotnick’s debut collection “course the dialectic between freedom and containment, banging up against elements and identities along the way.”
Words Become Ashes — An Offering by Cindy Rinne
Bamboo Dart Press | July 7, 2021
According to Kelsey Bryan-Zwick, Rinne’s poems and images “are the shawl one wants to wrap around torso, a visionary quilt one pulls cozy to the neck when longing for home.”
Purgatorio by Dante
Graywolf Press | July 13, 2021
Mary Jo Bang’s new version of Purgatorio is “a stunning translation of this fourteenth-century text, rich with references that span time, languages, and cultures.”
Every Day a Different Daredevil by liam bechen-rockefeller
LUPERCALIA press | July 15, 2021
According to J. P. Seabright, the poems in this chapbook “explore rich themes of gender, identity, sexuality, spirituality, family relationships, class struggle and loss.”
The River in the Belly by Fiston Mwanza Mujila
Deep Vellum | July 20, 2021
Translated by J. Bret Maney, Mwanza Mujila’s debut poetry collection in English is “a moving lyric meditation on the Democratic Republic of Congo and its namesake river.”
Father | Genocide by Margo Tamez
Turtle Point Press | July 20, 2021
In this poetry collection, Tamez “reconstructs her father’s struggle to be a man under American domination, tracing the settler erasure, denial, and genocide that he and preceding generations experienced.”
Sawgrass Sky by Andrew Hemmert
Texas Review Press | August 1, 2021
This debut poetry collection is “a coming-of-age story, a Floridian memoir-in-verse” addressing “religious disillusionment, sexual awakening, body image, environmental degradation, suburbia versus the wild, familial history, and the idea of home contextualized by distance.”
Teems Recedes by Caleb Nichols
Kelp Books | August 1, 2021
According to Holly Wren Spaulding, the poems in this debut collection “bring us closer to the sensuousness of the world, its marvels and devastations.”
Welcome to Midland by Logen Cure
Deep Vellum | August 10, 2021
This poetry collection “is a queer coming-of-age narrative in verse set against the contested backdrop of conservative small-town Texas.”
Indebted to Wind by L.R. Berger
Deerbrook Editions | August 14, 2021
According to Stephen Tapscot, “The wind in these eloquent, elegant, tensile poems is present as spirit, of course; as spirit it can manifest as the longing or fate of the body (it expires), as intellectual momentum (it inspires), as power for social justice (it aspires).”
Politics of the Minotaur by Karla K. Morton
Texas Review Press | August 15, 2021
Morton’s poetry collection “embraces those changes, opens them up, rolls them into the delicious magic of this unpredictable, glorious world.”
Everything Never Comes Your Way by Nicole Stellon O’Donnell
Red Hen Press | August 17, 2021
In her third collection, O’Donnell “explores the landscapes of memory, argument, and wilderness” in poems that “deconstruct memoir, dig at the roots of philosophical argumentation, and critique the role of the poet as an observer of the natural world.”
Poisons & Antidotes by Andrea L. Fry
Deerbrook Editions | August 21, 2021
In this new poetry collection, Fry, “clear-eyed and with precise description, depicts plants, situations, people where the extremes of beauty and toxicity, allure and danger mingle and test us.”
Trio: Planet Parable; Run: A Verse-History of Victoria Woodhull; and Endless Body by Karen Donovan, Diane Raptosh, and Daneen Wardrop
Etruscan Press | August 24, 2021
This trio of books by previous Etruscan Press authors “exemplifies how women become a clandestine conduit for life, power, and loss, particularly in the shadow of an implacable patriarchy.”
Nests in Air by Nathan Hoks
Black Ocean | August 27, 2021
In this poetry collection, Hoks blends “research of animals’ nest making habits with poetic forms that create vivid imaginative spaces.”
Vestigial by Aja Couchois Duncan
Litmus Press | August 30, 2021
In her second poetry collection, Duncan “continues to investigate ecology and heritage as a story of entangled becoming, synchronizing movements of deep time with the transient substance of touch.”
O.B.B. by Paolo Javier
Nightboat Books | August 31, 2021
Javier’s poetry collection is “a comics poem and a manifesto on comics poetry; an experimental comic book sequel to a poem twenty years in the making; and an homage to the Mimeo Revolution, weird fiction, kamishibai, the political cartoon, Pilipinx komiks history, and the poet bp Nichol.”
A Feeling Called Heaven by Joey Yearous-Algozin
Nightboat Books | August 31, 2021
Yearous-Algozin’s poetry collection “oscillates between grief and humor as it imagines the nonhuman world that will grow from the ruins of this one, cultivating a sense of presence and intimacy with the inevitable destruction of our global environment.”
Lost, Hurt, or in Transit Beautiful by Rohan Chhetri
Tupelo Press | September 1, 2021
Winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, this poetry collection is, according to Kristina Marie Darling, “a work in which poetic technique is brought to bear on lingering questions of identity, artistic tradition, and the cruelty implicit in language itself.”
Wings in Time by Callie Garnett
The Song Cave | September 1, 2021
In this debut poetry collection, Garnett’s experiences are “transcribed, recorded, rewound, shared and edited over emails, and nearly float contextless, full of the desire to touch the immaterial and the dematerialized.”
EROTECAY by Palaces
LUPERCALIA press | September 1, 2021
According to Taylor Byas, this debut poetry collection “is a story of grief and abuse nestled into the space between the sensual and the grotesque.”
I Was a Bell by M. Soledad Caballero
Red Hen Press | September 7, 2021
In this poetry collection, Caballero “imagines how memory frames and reshapes the present, how memory illuminates and limits the stories of ourselves, and how, despite the passage of time, primal moments in the past are the ghosts and echoes of our present.”
AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration by CAConrad
Wave Books | September 7, 2021
The poems in AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration “reach out from a (Soma)tic poetry ritual where CA flooded their body with the field recordings of recently extinct animals.”
Passion by June Jordan
Copper Canyon Press | September 14, 2021
Republished after decades out of print with a foreword by Nicole Sealey, Passion holds key works including “Poem About My Rights,” “Poem About Police Violence,” “Free Flight,” and an essay by the poet, “For the Sake of the People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us.”
Villainy by Andrea Abi-Karam
Nightboat Books | September 14, 2021
Abi-Karam’s second poetry collection “foments political action in public spaces, and indexes the various emotional states, such as rage, revelry, fear, grief, and desire to which queers must tend during protest.”
Umbilical Cord by Hasan Namir
Book*hug Press | September 14, 2021
Namir’s “warm, free-verse poems document the journey that he and his husband took to have a child.”
Among Elms, in Ambush by Bruce Weigl
BOA Editions | September 14, 2021
This new poetry collection “follows the celebrated poet and Vietnam War veteran as he explores combat, survival, and PTSD in brief prose vignettes.”
Hotel by Carl Adamshick
Four Way Books | September 15, 2021
From the political to the erotic and everywhere in between,” the poems in Adamshick’s latest collection “take us on a sometimes sober, sometimes raunchy ride.”
The Blank Page by Iván Argüelles
Sagging Meniscus | September 15, 2021
According to Carl Landauer, Argüelles “fills his Blank Page with astounding poetry, bringing us through Homeric, Dantesque, and Vedic worlds as well as the Americana of his youth in beautifully constructed lines with imaginative juxtapositions that would be the envy of André Breton or Paul Éluard.”
Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow by Natalka Bilotserkivets
Lost Horse Press | September 15, 2021
This poetry collection from an active participant in Ukraine’s Renaissance of the late-Soviet and early independence period “still speaks about movement and restricted movement, even symbolic movement.”
Tongue of a Crow by Peter Coyote
Four Way Books | September 15, 2021
This debut poetry collection “takes us on a whirlwind tour of an eclectic and exciting life as an actor and Zen Buddhist priest, meandering from love affairs to marriage to divorce to the Sixties to psychedelic spirituality and beyond.”
This Alaska by Carlie Hoffman
Four Way Books | September 15, 2021
According to Josh Bell, this debut poetry collection is “a book of heaven that has not forgotten the body nor the shadow cast by the body, nor how hunger leads you to the slaughterhouse and is love.”
It Isn’t a Ghost if It Lives in Your Chest by Joan Houlihan
Four Way Books | September 15, 2021
Houlihan’s sixth poetry collection “reflects upon the persistence of what is lost and the accidental ruptures of trauma that allow re-entry into our world.”
Seed Wheel by Kathryn Hunt
Lost Horse Press | September 15, 2021
The poems in this collection “are drenched in silence and wonderment, miseries and mysteries, and the stubborn cargo of our collective and individual histories.”
Gentefication by Antonio de Jesús López
Four Way Books | September 15, 2021
This debut poetry collection “nuances Latinidad as not just an immigration question, but an academic one” and “deals with Latinx death not as the literal passing of bodies, but as first tied with language.”
Cutlish by Rajiv Mohabir
Four Way Books | September 15, 2021
In this new poetry collection, Mohabir “creates a form migrated from Caribbean chutney music in order to verse the precarity of a queer Indo-Caribbean speaker in the newest context of the United States.”
Our Cancers: Poems by Dan O’Brien
Acre Books | September 15, 2021
In this poetry collection, O’Brien “chronicles the year and a half during which both he and his wife were treated for cancer.”
Through a Red Place by Rebecca Pelky
Perugia Press | September 15, 2021
Written in English and Mohegan, this story-in-poems “assembles the author’s research into her Native and non-Native heritage in the land now known as Wisconsin” and “relates narratives of people who converged on and impacted this space in myriad ways.”
WARD by Ryan Vine
Texas Review Press | September 15, 2021
This poetry collection is “a book about ethos and mythos, about the creation of a character and the investigation of voice.”
In Light of Stars by Bruce Willard
Four Way Books | September 15, 2021
The poems in Willard’s collection “rise up (much like the clouds over his oft-traversed Rockies), as the speaker throws his attention to earth and sky, better to understand his own dynamic and shifting inner weather.”
Masquerade by Carolyne Wright
Lost Horse Press | September 15, 2021
Masquerade is “a jazz-inflected, lyric-narrative sequence of poems, a “memoir in poetry” set principally in pre-Katrina New Orleans and in Seattle, involving an interracial couple, artists and writers.”
Apricots for Donbas by Lyuba Yakimchuk
Lost Horse Press | September 15, 2021
Translated from the Ukrainian by Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky, and Svetlana Lavochkina, this poetry collection offers “intimate glimpses into the story of a woman affected by a life-altering situation beyond her control.”
Tenderness by Derrick Austin
BOA Editions | September 21, 2021
Winner of the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, this poetry collection “uplifts communal spaces as sites of resistance and healing, wonders at the restorative powers of art and erotic love, and celebrates the capaciousness of friendship.”
Ceive by B. K. Fischer
BOA Editions | September 21, 2021
This novella-in-verse is a “poetic retelling of Noah’s Ark set in the near future… that recounts a post-apocalyptic journey aboard a container ship.”
Lightning Falls in Love by Laura Kasischke
Copper Canyon Press | September 21, 2021
In her twelfth poetry collection, Kasischke “makes magic with a complex alchemy of nostalgia and fire, birdwing and sorrow.”
American Home by Sean Cho A.
Autumn House Press | September 23, 2021
Winner of the 2020 Chapbook Prize, selected by Danusha Laméris, this debut poetry chapbook “directs a keen eye on everyday occurrences and how these small events shape us as individuals.”
Under the Broom Tree by Natalie Homer
Autumn House Press | September 23, 2021
Drawing inspiration from the story of the prophet Elijah, this debut poetry collection “is a trek through the wildernesses of the heart and of the natural world.”
The Animal Indoors by Carly Inghram
Autumn House Press | September 23, 2021
Winner of the 2020 CAAPP Book Prize, selected by Terrance Hayes, this poetry collection explores “the day-to-day experiences of a Black queer woman who is ceaselessly bombarded with images of mass-consumerism, white supremacy, and sexism.”
The Other Place by Brendan Cleary
Red Hen Press | September 28, 2021
Through this series of love letters and poems, Cleary “explores the ghosts of his past and what it means to experience a loss.”
Habitus by Radna Fabias
Deep Vellum/Phoneme | September 28, 2021
Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer, Habitus is “a collection full of thrilling sensory images, lines in turn grim and enchanting which move from the Caribbean island of Curaçao to the immigrant experience of the Netherlands.”
America by Fernando Valverde
Copper Canyon Press | September 28, 2021
Translated by Carolyn Forche and presented in a bilingual edition, this poetry collection is “mournfully lyrical, politically sharp, with a sweeping view of American roots, dysfunctions, and ideals.”
Air Raid by Polina Barskova
Ugly Duckling Presse | October 1, 2021
Translated by Valzhyna Mort, this poetry collection explores the Siege of Leningrad and “takes us through the archives of memory and literature in this city of death.”
Before I Had the Word by Brooke Sahni
Texas Review Press | October 1, 2021
Selected by Maggie Smith as 2020 Winner of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, this poetry collection “attempts to conflate, even dissolve the idea that mundane experience is separate from religious, holy experience.”
The Face of the Quartzes by Chus Pato
Veliz Books | October 1, 2021
In her twelfth book of poetry—and sixth to be translated from the Galician by Erín Moure—Pato “creates a manual for living that is one with birds, with animals, with peaks and trains and lighthouses, and with women who undertake journeys toward life (the improper) and spring (renewal).”
Two Murals by Jesús Castillo
The Song Cave | October 1, 2021
In two long poems, Castillo “explores love, selfhood, and transformation in a wasteful age” and “makes a case for perseverance.”
I Want Something Other Than Time by Lewis Freedman
Ugly Duckling Presse | October 1, 2021
This series of 64 poems “worries the problem of self-identicality—the distance between the self and the self that recognizes the self—into the socio-political sphere as a problem of temporality, as the work of our shared subjects in perceiving and projecting pasts, futures, presents.”
Afterfeast by Lisa Hiton
Tupelo Press | October 1, 2021
Winner of the Dorset Prize for Poetry, this poetry collection is, according to Mary Jo Bang, “covertly grounded in metaphysical questions… Vast categories and fluid distinctions are fractured and then woven back together.”
Harm Eden by Jennifer Nelson
Ugly Duckling Presse | October 1, 2021
This poetry collection “attempts to think through and simultaneously away from this evil fantasy and the civilization it upholds by exploiting the tension between history and poetry.”
I Name Him Me: Selected Poems of Ma Yan by Ma Yan
Ugly Duckling Presse | October 1, 2021
In this English-language debut, Ma Yan “delves into questions of gender, mental health, death, desire, physicality and our personal interactions to show how they all shape the raw experience of existence.”
Diamonds by Camille Guthrie
BOA Editions | October 5, 2021
In this poetry collection, Guthrie “writes about the trials and surprises of divorce, parenting, country life—and the difficulties and delights of being alone, looking at art, and falling in love.”
A Cluster of Noisy Planets by Charles Rafferty
BOA Editions | October 5, 2021
Rafferty’s latest collection of prose poems “captures the rhythms and patterns of life as a lover, father, and poet, distilling each moment to its essence and grounding them collectively in the wider perspective of a changing world, the constant turning of the stars and the changing seasons of the New England countryside.”
All This Time by Cedar Sigo
Wave Books | October 5, 2021
The poems in Sigo’s latest collection “call attention to the experience of living as an embodiment of art, reminding the reader that poetry is like an open-air structure; it is open to all who are curious enough to welcome everything in.”
Her Kind by Cindy Veach
CavanKerry Press | October 5, 2021
Set against the historical backdrop of the Salem Witch Trials, this poetry collection is “about women who are innocent and are used and/or disregarded by the culture: women viewed as witches, women making their own choices, women fighting for freedom.”
Lovers of Today by Garrett Caples
Wave Books | October 5, 2021
Lovers of Today is a collection of poetry “that pays tribute to friendships including Kevin Killian, John Ashbery, Joanne Kyger, and Bill Berkson, among others, wherein each poem is a celebration of life’s ephemerality.”
Bestiary Dark by Marianne Boruch
Copper Canyon Press | October 12, 2021
The poems in Boruch’s collection “face the ancient, unsettling relationship of humans and the natural world―the looming effect we’ve wrought on wildlife―and what solace and repair our learning even a little might mean.”
Iceland is Melting and So Are You by Talya Rubin
Book*hug Press | October 12, 2021
This poetry collection “asks us to consider what we have kept frozen and unexamined within us and—in doing so—recognize the complex grief and wonder we face in considering the end of the human epoch.”
Irredenta by Oscar Oswald
Nightboat Books | October 12, 2021
Oswald’s debut poetry collection “interrogates American civics and citizenry from its foundation in the pastoral tradition.”
Ecologia by Sophia Anfinn Tonnessen
Unbound Edition Press | October 12, 2021
This debut poetry collection, “noteworthy for its experimental forms, long poems, and intentional repetitions, explores the intersections of gender, identity, and memory across time.”
We Prefer the Damned by Carlo Matos
Unbound Edition Press | October 12, 2021
Matos “pushes toward a new grammar for intersectional identities as the poems in We Prefer the Damned weave his Portuguese-American heritage and bi+ lived experience.”
Habitus by Radna Fabias
Deep Vellum/Phoneme | October 12, 2021
Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer, Habitus is “a collection full of thrilling sensory images, lines in turn grim and enchanting which move from the Caribbean island of Curaçao to the immigrant experience of the Netherlands.”
Listen by Ute Carson
Yellow Arrow Publishing | October 12, 2021
This poetry chapbook “spans the life cycle: birth, parenting (and grandparenting), aging, and dying.”
ink earl by Susan Holbrook
Coach House Books | October 12, 2021
ink earl “takes the popular subgenre of erasure poetry to its illogical conclusion… starting with ad copy that extols the iconic Pink Pearl eraser.”
Body Was by Isabelle Garron
Litmus Press | October 15, 2021
Translated by Eléna Rivera, Body Was is “a book-length poem that begins with the death of a father and ends with the birth of a child.”
A Dangerous Place by Chelsea B. DesAutels
Sarabande Books | October 19, 2021
This debut poetry collection is “the story of a woman with two swellings in her belly: a nascent baby, and a cancerous tumor.”
Burying the Mountain by Shangyang Fang
Copper Canyon Press | October 19, 2021
In this debut poetry collection, “evoking the music of ancient Chinese poetry, Fang alloys political erasure, exile, remembrance, and death into a single brushstroke on the silk scroll, where names are forgotten as paper boats on water.”
Carmelina: Figures by Ronaldo V. Wilson
Wendy’s Subway | October 19, 2021
Wilson’s poetry collection “excavates the territory between memory, nation, and embodiment, exploring place as a discipline of the body and an extension of the hand.”
Surface Fugue by Ralph Sneeden
EastOver Press | October 20, 2021
According to Willie Perdomo, Sneeden explores “brilliant variations on distance and memory, distillations of history and love, a sublime mix of self-reflection and intimacy juxtaposed with a larger world view.”
The Cup by Robert Kelly
McPherson & Company | October 26, 2021
The Cup is “a lyrical narrative poem in 91 sections about two young Americans following an ancient pilgrimage route, their explorations interwoven with legends of the Holy Grail.”
speculation, n. by Shayla Lawz
Autumn House Press | October 28, 2021
This debut collection “brings together poetry, sound, and performance to challenge our spectatorship and the reproduction of the Black body.”
Inventory of Doubts by Landon Godfrey
Tupelo Press | November 1, 2021
According to Dana Levin, this Dorset Prize–winning poetry collection “is a book where a human is just another kind of animal, and a drinking glass is a deeply feeling creature.”
West of the Backstory by Tim Hawkins
Fernwood Press | November 1, 2021
The poems in this collection “range widely in geography, tone, and style in search of the extraordinary in the things we take for granted, guided always by the desire to be both in the moment and apart from it at the same time.”
AUX ARC TRYPT ICH: Poppycock and Assphodel; Winter; A Night of Dark Trees by Cody-Rose Clevidence
Nightboat Books | November 2, 2021
Clevidence’s poetry collection is “a triptych of wild lyric love poems that are, at heart, an ode to Arkansas.”
Uncertain Acrobats by Rebecca Hart Olander
CavanKerry Press | November 2, 2021
This poetry collection “reaches beyond personal grief and speaks to all who have been upended by terminal illness and the enormity of loss one faces when a beloved leaves one’s life.”
Banana [ ]/we pilot the blood by Paul Hlava Ceballos and Quenton Baker
The 3rd Thing | November 2, 2021
This book includes “two accounts of empire by two different poets, between them a critical/contemplative interval conducted by writer and scholar Christina Sharpe in conversation with artist Torkwase Dyson’s ‘hypershapes.'”
Tomaž by Joshua Beckman and Tomaž Šalamun
Wave Books | November 2, 2021
Tomaž is “an extended poem assembled by Joshua Beckman from his recorded conversations with one of the foundational figures of the Eastern European avant-garde, Tomaž Šalamun.”
Prognosis by Jim Moore
Graywolf Press | November 2, 2021
In his eighth poetry collection, Moore “looks into unrelenting darkness where moments of tenderness and awe illuminate, at times suddenly like lightning in the night, at others, more quietly, as the steady glow of streetlights in a snowstorm.”
A God at the Door by Tishani Doshi
Copper Canyon Press | November 9, 2021
In this poetry collection, Doshi “calls on the extraordinary minutiae of nature and humanity to redefine belonging and unveil injustice.”
The Absence of Zero by R. Kolewe
Book*hug Press | November 9, 2021
“Consisting of 256 16-line quartets, and 34 free-form interruptions,” this long poem “is a beautiful example of thinking in language, a meditation that explores time and memory in both content and form.”
Also Dark by Angelique Palmer
Etruscan Press | November 9, 2021
According to Pages Matam, Palmer “unabashedly transmutes shame, guilt, and all the little imperfections of her world (and the ones life has thrown her) into a raucous work of art.”
The Math of Saint Felix by Diane Exavier
The 3rd Thing | November 9, 2021
This book-length lyric is “an attempt to do the math of a woman, of a family, of a country, of a diaspora. The sum of one life reveals the permutations of many: daughters, sisters, lovers.”
Mother Is a Body by Brandi Katherine Herrera
Fonograf Editions | November 9, 2021
In this book-length poem, Herrera “pieces together material excavated from within Instagram’s endless scroll, Wikipedia’s citations, and even the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s archives to create a layered inscription—musically, emotionally, philosophically— to the idea of motherhood, and the children she never had.”
book of the other: small in comparison by Truong Tran
Kaya Press | November 9, 2021
This collection of poetry, prose, and essays is “a piercing, furious examination of the devastation wrought on a life by institutional platitudes put in the service of unexamined privilege.”
Wild Embrace by Tim Hatch
Bamboo Dart Press | November 10, 2021
According to Stephanie Barbé Hammer, this debut poetry collection “careens the reader through a dizzying multiverse of male transgenerational trauma, bullying, and redemptive possibilities that hover tantalizingly on the margins of these 64 powerful poems.”
Old Snow, White Sun by Caroline Goodwin
JackLeg Press | November 15, 2021
According to Aileen Cassinetto, this poetry collection “brilliantly gathers mothlight, herbal lore, psychedelia, heavy metal, and old charm to capture a world that is bountiful, magnificent, and impermanent.”
Study of the Raft by Leonora Simonovis
Center for Literary Publishing | November 15, 2021
According to Jim Daniels, “Simonovis’s powerful, confident voice runs through each and every one of these poems like a lifeline in defiance of injustice and oppression.”
The Gleaner Song by Song Lin
Deep Vellum | November 16, 2021
Translated by Dong Li, this collection “spans four decades of poetic exploration, with a focus on poems written during the poet’s long stay in France, Singapore, Argentina, and more recently, his return to China.”
There Are Trans People Here by H. Melt
Haymarket Books | November 16, 2021
This poetry collection is “a testament to the healing power of community and the beauty of trans people, history, and culture.”
Jim Harrison: Complete Poems by Jim Harrison
Copper Canyon Press | November 23, 2021
Introduced by Terry Tempest Williams, this collection “contains every poem Harrison published over his fifty-year career and displays his wide range of poetic styles and forms.”
Settler by Maggie Queeney
Tupelo Press | December 1, 2021
According to Jenny Molberg, in this poetry collection Queeney “reimagines form, challenging staid ideas of confinement, to gaze toward an edgy horizon.”
Glass Bikini by Kristin Bock
Tupelo Press | December 1, 2021
Chad Sweeny writes that this poetry collection is “a bewitching revelation of what has been hidden so long as to become dangerous, yet strangely beautiful.”
Only Rumour Survives by David Smith
Coverstory books | December 1, 2021
Smith’s fourth poetry collection “sings with melancholy, humour, wistful reflection and evocative insight.”
Two Bolts by Matt Broaddus
Ugly Duckling Presse | December 1, 2021
Broaddus’s debut full-length poetry collection “explores the experience of Black diaspora as a circulatory process.”
Newsflash Under Fire, Over the Shoulder by Jed Munson
Ugly Duckling Presse | December 1, 2021
This debut poetry chapbook “is a dispatch at the end of a coming of age, one shrouded by barely-functioning systems of meaning-making and thought.”
Vice-royal-ties by Julia Wong Kcomt
Ugly Duckling Presse | December 1, 2021
Translated by Jennifer Shyue, “the poems in this chapbook play with binaries: in power, love, language, country, identity.”
Horses Drawn with Blue Chalk by Rocío Ágreda Piérola
Ugly Duckling Presse | December 1, 2021
This poetry collection translated by Jessica Sequeira “is full of ghostly traces, smudged lines from the past turned with care into new forms.”
Dream Pattering Soles by Miguelángel Meza
Ugly Duckling Presse | December 1, 2021
In this poetry collection translated by Elisa Taber, “words are signifiers without hierarchy within the lyric structure that reference the cosmological Mbyá Guaraní narratives.”
TO STAND AT THE PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED by Aisha Sasha John
Ugly Duckling Presse | December 1, 2021
This poetry collection was “written primarily over the course of four months in the fall of 2018, when Aisha Sasha John spent time in her native Vancouver.”
Punks: New & Selected Poems by John Keene
The Song Cave | December 1, 2021
Keene’s latest poetry collection “is a generous treasury in seven sections that spans decades and includes previously unpublished and brand new work.”
A Sentimental Hairpin by Flower Conroy
Tolsun Books | December 7, 2021
This poetry collection features “a voice nakedly questioning if it is the body or the mind which is more unkind.”
Firewatch by Jan Verberkmoes
Fonograf Editions | December 7, 2021
This debut poetry collection “lives in the porous recesses of recollection and the uncertainty felt when re-entering traumatic psychological and physical territories.”
Flowers as Mind Control by Laura Minor
BkMk Press | December 7, 2021
In this John Ciardi Prize for Poetry–winning collection, Minor “meditates on consumption, vice, homesickness, memory, family, and the landscape.”
Luminous Blue Variables and Other Major Poems by Michelle Boisseau
BkMk Press | December 7, 2021
This collection gathers major poems from Boisseau’s previous collections, as well as uncollected poems and interview excerpts.
Bower Lodge by Paul J. Pastor
Fernwood Press | December 10, 2021
In this debut full-length poetry collection, “each poem speaks with uncommon tenderness toward that which we too often avoid—the demands of love, the heart of a friend, the beauty of the uncontainable wild.”
April On Olympia by Lorna Dee Cervantes
Marsh Hawk Press | December 15, 2021
According to Camille T. Dungy, Cervantes’s latest poetry collection is “a keenly observed, politically charged, uncompromising tour of the poet’s mind and our world.”
The Solitude of Memory by Michael Miller
Passager Books | December 15, 2021
Of this collection, Miller writes, “At eighty, I hope this new volume becomes a distillation of war, love, and blindness.”
The Wild Language of Deer by Susan Glass
Slate Roof Press | December 25, 2021
According to Alison Luterman, “This book, with its exquisite woodcuts and a poem in Braille translation, will subtly reorient your relationship to our world.”
