Deborah Ager's Blog, page 19

Day 18: Elizabeth J. Coleman Doesn't Have Five Favorite Poetry Books

32 Poems chose to celebrate National Poetry Month by sharing recommendations of poetry books. We hope this effort helps you discover or re-discover poets–either those recommended or those recommending. Here's the latest set of recommendations from Elizabeth J. Coleman:

For the most part, I don't have favorite poetry books of all time, rather books I am most excited about right this minute, so I'd like to recommend five of those. I continue to be dazzled and excited by books as I read them, and I wouldn't want to limit myself to five (five hundred maybe.)

Having said that, here are five I'm crazy about right now, that I would highly recommend.

Elegy on Toy Piano by Dean Young is a beautiful, compelling book. The process of discovery for the poet becomes a process of discovery for the reader. In spite of Young's focus on death as an end (rather than a new beginning), I found his work uplifting in its honesty in its raw beauty, and in its sly and generous humor.

The fascination in Tomaz Salamun's poems lies in the disparate things that are brought together, their majesty lies in the way they contain the world, both of space and time, and their fun lies in not knowing where the poet will go next. In The Book For My Brother, danger lurks everywhere: in an oppressive political landscape, in nature, in the universe's dark humor (which becomes the poet's), in religion, in God, in relationships and in the poet's isolated self. The poems unfurl like the clay and silk flags and the river in "To the Heart." (The oppressiveness of the culture and of nature are reflected in the fact that the flags are made partly of clay. They are not free, cannot fly in the breeze.)

The poems in Home Deep Blue embody Valentine's grace and generosity as a poet. Valentine is a visual poet, a poet of color. While the subject of Valentine's poetry is often other people, in many of her poems I feel like I'm seeing a painting. In "To Raphael, angel of happy meeting," "The pear tree buds shine like salt" (what a beautiful image), and in the last stanza, "the abundant tree/open out its branches, white-gold wings…still too light for us to hold."

Yehudi Amichai's images are always fresh and always apt. Each image, though straightforward, tends to contain its own universe, and he writes with great irony, yet without cynicism. An exquisite example of Amichai comparing the human to the inanimate is from "Letter of Recommendation"" "Oh, touch me, touch me, you good woman!/This is not a scar you feel under my shirt./it's a letter of recommendation/folded from my father:/"He is still a good boy and full of love." The image creates a second simple scene, complete with dialogue.

Finally, my heart will always belong to Guillaume Apollinaire, the first poet I fell in love with, and his book Alcools, in French. The music of the poems flows as beautifully and mysteriously as the Seine in "Le Pont Miraubeau."

BIO: Elizabeth J. Coleman's poems have appeared in Connecticut Review, 32 Poems, The Raintown Review, "J" Journal, Per Contra and Blueline among others. Her chapbook, The Saint of Lost Things, was published in 2009 by Word Temple Press. Elizabeth's translations of poetry into French have appeared in Per Contra. In 2009, Elizabeth was the featured poetry reader, chosen by 32 Poems, at "Periodically Speaking: Literary Magazine Editors Introduce Emerging Writers at the New York Public Library." Elizabeth is a candidate for an MFA in poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, a member of the New York, Georgia and Washington DC Bars and a classical guitarist. Visit her website to see links to some of her work and to purchase her chapbook, The Saint of Lost Things.

April 17: Erica Dawson's Five Favorite Poetry Books

Caki Wilkinson's Circles Where the Head Should Be.

Caki's book is one of the best debuts I've seen in a really long time: incredibly smart; but, her amazing intellect doesn't intimidate the reader. The poems are heady but extremely accessible, often making me smile while forcing back tears.

Morri Creech's Field Knowledge

Morri's poems are quiet and contemplative, but the energy fueling the lines is palpable because he often visits what I refer to as "the good verb store." He puts the defibrillator on subjects some readers think are DNR: biblical figures, philosophers, things that happened before 2000.

Greg Williamson's Errors in the Script

Reading this book when I was in his Poetic Forms class changed my poetic life. I learned anything was ready for traditional and invented forms: anything from waiting on hold for a Help Line to cans of soup to a disappointment that's almost tragic.

Juliana Gray's Man Under My Skin

Juliana managed to do something many writers simply can't do well (obviously, Claudia Emerson can). She wrote a book involving issues of marriage and divorce but did it so craftily in metaphors of birds and other good ol' fashioned concrete images; it's hard not to admire this collection.

Laura McCullough's Panic

Similar to my gut reaction to Ras' book, the kickass cover did it for me, here. But, inside, the poems weaving together a narrative of a boy who drowned in a neighborhood pool is an amazing mix of fiction and poetry that's simply ferocious, in the best way.

BIO: Erica Dawson's first collection, Big-Eyed Afraid, won the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and was named Best Debut of 2007 by Contemporary Poetry Review. Her poems have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Barrow Street, The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, Best American Poetry 2008, the 7th edition of Poetry: A Pocket Anthology, and are forthcoming in Waccamaw and other journals and anthologies. Assistant Professor of English and Writing at University of Tampa, Poetry Editor of the Tampa Review, and founding faculty of the University's brand-new low-residency MFA, she lives in gulf coast Florida with her 10 month-old Shih-Tzu/baby, Stella. Read an interview with her. Listen to her read poems.

Day 17: Adam Vines on Five Favorite Poetry Books You Must Run Out to Read Now

Five favorite collections at present:

Amy Clampitt, The Kingfisher: Clampitt's poems give extraordinary insight into humans' connection to and detachment from the natural world.

Andrew Hudgins, The Glass Hammer: Hudgins is a masterful formalist who tells witty, heartbreaking, unapologetic Southern stories about his childhood. If you admire Frost, you must read Hudgins.

Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries: Bogan, perhaps because of her modest production of poems and her acclaim as an editor, is perhaps one of the most unnoticed yet most poignantly empowered and mythic feminist voices of the last century. With all of the stark landscapes, eyes, mirrors, blurry lovers, and shadows in her poems, I have the eerie feeling that the poems are watching me as closely as I am reading them.

Anthony Hecht, The Hard Hours: A perfect collection by the finest poet of the second half of the twentieth century—enough said.

George Herbert, The Temple: Combining the skills of a poet, theologian, architect, and builder, Herbert constructs his ecstatic and supplicated vision of the seventeenth-century Anglican church poem by poem. These are some of the finest lyrical poems written in English.

Bio: Adam Vines is an assistant professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he edits Birmingham Poetry Review. His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in The Literary Review, Hunger Mountain, Redivider, Sewanee Theological Review, Tampa Review, 32 Poems, among others. He was a finalist for the 2011 Miller Williams Prize, and his collection, The Coal Life, will be published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2012.

Day 16: M. Scott Douglass on Five Favorite Poetry Books

Today, M. Scott Douglass of Main Street Rag shares his five favorite poetry books. Each day this month, the 32 Poems blog has been sharing the favorite poetry books of various writers and artists. Here's what Scott had to say:

I had to think long and hard to narrow this to five books. In the end, I added a couple of also-rans from titles I have published. Forgive me if my list and/or explanations go a little long and please note: although they are numbered, they are not really in any particular order. Each book fits neatly into a particular time of my life.

1) The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster by Richard Brautigan (Dell, 1968)

My ex-wife gave me this book as a gift almost 30 years ago. It's the only thing that has survived that marriage besides my son. What I like about it is the simplistic nature and power of the imagery. In many poems, Brautigan wraps an entire story around a single image. This was kind of an introduction to hit-and-run poetry for me.

2) Harvest Poems, 1910-1960 by Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1960)

Carl Sandburg has always been a strong influence for me since the first time I heard him read "Chicago" from a scratchy 33rpm LP album on one of those Victrolas they used to wheel from class to class in high school. He was in tune with the language of his time, the language the average Joe on the street spoke and understood. I bought two books in the gift shop when visiting his home in Flat Rock, NC: a huge three-inch hardback for the shelf and this pocket-size, 120-page book printed on cheap, browning paper. It's like having a complete collection of one group's music at home, but a "Greatest Hits" CD for your car. Of course, the concept predates iPods, so some folks may not be able to relate to it. It's a book I take with me when I'm reading OPs (that's Other Peoples' for those who never smoked).

3) Among the Dog Eaters by Adrian C. Louis (West End Press, 1992)

Coffeehouse Poets Quarterly was a low-distribution literary magazine published by a guy name Ray Foreman out of Berthoud, CO. He published one of my poems in 1991 (or was it '92–who can remember these things) and on the next page was this voice that jumped off the page. I have five of Adrian C. Louis' books, but this was the first one I bought, my sentimental favorite, and another I take with me on the road when reading OPs. His is a voice of anger, pain, irony, defiance. His imagery and language took me to a world with which I had no experience. It still does.

4) In Mad Love and War by Joy Harjo, (Wesleyan University Press, 1990)

Like Adrian C. Louis, Joy Harjo is a Native American. I first met her and heard her read her work at a festival in Asheville, NC—which is where I bought this book. Her voice is more sad than angry, but many of her images—like Adrian's—jump right off the page. Her poem, "Legacy," in this book is still one of my favorite poems ever because it depicts what I've always said to the more sensitive members of my audience when reading: great poems make you react on an emotional level—even if that reaction is disgust.

5) Here, Bullet by Brian Turner (Alice James Books, 2005)

Every Congressman, Senator, President should be required to read this book before they are deemed qualified to send young men to war.

Of the books I have published as the Big Dog at Main Street Rag, the following are my favorites and honestly rank among my favorite books, though I don't know where I would place them if I had to weave them into the five above if I had to put these in the order of which I like best.

The Hospital Poems by Jim Ferris, (Main Street Rag, 2004)

This was the winner of our 2004 Poetry Book Award. Jim has a wry, dark humor that can backhand the reader if they're not careful. He has a disability with his leg that caused him to spend a lot of his early years in a Shriners Hospital where they tried to "fix" him. These poems carry the story of that time of his life with humor, sadness and even a bit of bitterness.

love poem to androgyny by Stacey Waite (Main Street Rag, 2006)

Winner of the 2006 MSR Chapbook Contest. Here is a truly unique voice, a humorous voice, a person writing from a perspective that most of us will never quite understand. She brings us into her world in a way that makes us laugh and wonder simultaneously. Sometimes even cringe with embarrassment.

Something to Read on the Plane by Richard Taylor (Main Street Rag, 2004)

This was a runner up in our chapbook contest and I must admit the author is also a friend of many years. I've always been disappointed that we couldn't get this title into an airport bookstore. It really is a great little book that can be enjoyed on a plane trip. The humor, imagery, and stories are easily accessible to all. These poems remind me of a family or class reunion where people sit around and tell stories they tell every time they get together and each time you hear them you laugh as if they were new.

BIO: M. Scott Douglass owns Main Street Rag press.

Day 15 Carolina Ebeid's 5 Books That'll Blow Yer Skirt Up

Happy 15th day of National Poetry Month. Every day this month, we're sharing recommendations of five favorite poetry books. Enjoy the lists and learn more about the poets who are sharing their favorite books with you.

Today's post comes to us by way of Carolina Ebeid:

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I've made no hierarchical list. These titles represent a swatch from a library of favorites that are important to me.

Delusions, ETC. by John Berryman

I am waiting for a scholar/poet to come out with the annotations to The Dream Songs. Many of his poems are forever "archived" in my memory.

The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

When I'm in a gray funk, GMH jolts me back to life.

Souls of the Labadie Tract by Susan Howe

A quote: "We are all clothed with fleece of sheep I keep saying as if

I were singing as these words do. Throw a shawl over me so you won't be afraid to sleep. I have already shown that space is God."

The Master Letters by Lucie Brock-Broido

This book (as well as A Hunger and Trouble in Mind) continues to be one of the most shaping influences upon my imagination.

Columbarium by Susan Stewart

I marvel at the way in which Stewart assembles her books. This one is arranged as a kind of abecedary.

Bio: Carolina Ebeid's poems appear in Gulf Coast, Poetry, Agni, 32 Poems, Fugue, Copper Nickel, Anti–, and West Branch, among others. Originally from New Jersey, she now lives in Austin where she is a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers, and serves as poetry editor for the Bat City Review. She is at work on her first manuscript, which was a finalist for the Vassar Miller Prize. She was chosen as a CantoMundo fellow for 2011.

Day 14: Ravi Shankar's 5 Favorite Poetry Books

We all know you can't really pick five favorite books and call it a day. However, we at 32 Poems do appreciate those who attempt this impossible task. Ravi Shankar is our victim today and does an admirable job of distilling his poetic preferences into just five favorite poetry books.

Wallace Stevens, Parts of a World (1942): this collection houses some all-time-classic Stevens' poems, like "The Connoisseur of Chaos," "Of Modern Poetry," and "Poetry is A Destructive Force," providing a vision of the asymptote of human intelligence towards which self-referential sounds seek but ultimately fail to merge. This collection also has such gems as "The Rabbit As King of Ghosts," with perhaps the most zen-like line of poetry in the English language: "Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk."

Barbara Guest, Defensive Rapture (1994): the crystallization of a painterly poetics about "understanding what it means / to understand music." This collection is astonishing for the attention it pays to language's materiality, the drifting silences of white spaces, the associative leaps as "something like images" spread concentrically outwards like splotches of rain falling on a pond.

Adam Zagajewski, Trzej aniołowie (1998), translated by Clare Cavanagh, Gorczyńsk, Benjamin Ivry & C.K. Williams. The Hudson Review *calls* Zagajewski "a wry metaphysician" and that's just one of the aspects about his work that I adore. Along with his plurality, contradictions, the triumph of joy over tyranny and nihilism, and the reclamation of Polish history that are omnipresent in this memorably translated collection.

Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Yellow Hibiscus (2004): The selected poems from this renowned Indian linguist, poet & critic are full of conceptual riddles, savvy reinventions and formal experiments—Sapppho becomes a hijira in a Delhi slum, Kali a paan-chewing woman longing for a lover and the graphemic/run-on style of Sanskrit is masterfully rendered into a contemporary English idiom.

Cathy Park Hong, Dance, Dance Revolution (2007): a future world built from the dialect up, fractured and creolized, imagined with such force and newness that it seems an original genre is being born.

BIO: Ravi Shankar is founding editor of Drunken Boat and the author of five books and chapbooks of poetry, including most recently the 2010 National Poetry Prize winning collection of poems, Deepening Groove. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton's Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond called "a beautiful achievement for world literature" by Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer. He currently serves as Co-Director of Creative Writing at Central Connecticut State University and teaches in Fairfield University's MFA Program and in the first international MFA program at City University of Hong Kong. You can follow him on Twitter @empurpler.

Where I'll Be: Conversations and Connections Conference 2011

On April 16, 2011, yours truly (Deborah) will speak about social media for writers at the Conversations and Connections Conference at Johns Hopkins in DC. Those energetic, curious, smart people over at Barrelhouse organized the event.

You want this link if you want to see Steve Almond with a pitchfork to his posterior.

Who Will Be There

Schedule: If you've ever wanted to "speed date" an editor, see what's happening at 12:15 pm.

General Schedule:

* 9:30 — welcome and opening remarks

* 9:45 — workshop session 1

* 11:00 — workshop session 2

* 12:15 to 2:15 — lunch and speed dating with editors

* 2:30 to 3:30 — keynote speaker Steve Almond knocks your socks off

* 3:45 to 4:45 — workshop session 3

It might be a good idea to leave your socks at home—just to make things bit more challenging for Steve Almond.

Hope to see you there.

Day 14: Don Illich's Five Favorite Poetry Books

New & Selected Poems by Thomas Lux

An introduction to a dark and humorous sensibility I've tried to emulate.

The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems by Albert Goldbarth

Has whatever kind of work might be your taste, from short lyrics to longer works.

The Endarkenment by Jeffrey McDaniel

Inventive and intelligent, this book also becomes more personal in a moving way.

Nightworks by Marvin Bell

Bell has a such a great humanistic and wise sensibility.

Some Ether by Nick Flynn

Great personal poetry by a writer whose memoirs are also wonderful.

Bio: Donald Illich has published work in LIT, The Iowa Review, Nimrod, and other journals. He lives in Rockville, Maryland where he works as a writer-editor. Visit his blog.

Day 13: Daniel Nester's 5 Favorite Poetry Books

Welcome to Day 13 of National Poetry Month. 32 Poems is celebrating by sharing five favorite poetry books each day this month in order to:

1. Promote contemporary and, hopefully, new-to-you books.

2. Promote the work of the writers taking the time to recommend their favorite books.

Please consider ordering the recommended books and also checking out the work of the recommenders. We include a bio at the end of each post.

With no further ado, Daniel Nester shares his five favorite poetry books:

Amanda Nadelberg, . A tour-de-force of a debut. From the first time I read her poems, I published it every chance I could get. Check out her sestina here.
Barbara Louise Ungar, Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life. My colleague at The College of Saint Rose writes a poem-cycle on "was-bands," life, love. Torch songs au go-go.
Jeanann Verlee, Racing Hummingbirds. When will we finally admit so-called slam poets can hang with we elbow-patchers on the page? This is a good place to start.
Julie Carr, 100 Notes on Violence. A big leap forward from an already forward-looking poet. This is an important book.
M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong! I just ordered this, so I can't offer a blurb. I've just heard good things about it—use of source materials with poems. Looking forward to reading this.

BIO: Daniel Nester is the author of How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of humorous nonfiction. His first two books, God Save My Queen and God Save My Queen II, are collections on his obsession with the rock band Queen. His work has appeared in a variety of places, such as Salon.com, The Morning News, McSweeney's, The Daily Beast, Time Out New York, and Bookslut, and has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2003, The Best Creative Nonfiction, and Now Write! Nonfiction. He is an associate professor of English at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY. He is managing editor of the group culture-slash-literature blog We Who Are About To Die. Find him online at danielnester.com and on Twitter.

Day 12: Holly Karapetkova on 5 Favorite Poetry Books

The Boatloads, by Dan Albergotti

This book, which won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Award, tackles the big issues fearlessly and with such grace that you hardly realize how immense the journey has been until you reach the end of it. It asks questions I didn't know I had but now can't get out of my head—like the one in "The Age of Adam": "how could the man/ have even been given a working penis, if God, unsure/ of the final product, had not yet decided upon Eve?"

I Was the Jukebox, by Sandra Beasley

In the author's own words, this book moves outward from the personal; the poems take on a wild array of personas from a piano in love to an eggplant in a bar to a 21st century woman on a date with an ancient Greek hero. The voices are so full of life that I can't resist reading the poems aloud (and laughing aloud, too). Have you ever felt sorry for a jukebox? If not, you haven't read this book.

Logorrhea Dementia, by Kyle Dargan

I think titles like "Star-Spangled Sutra" and "Public-Verb Agreement" say it all. Dargan's book is hip and profound, merging God and red onions into the same delicious and thought-provoking sentences.

Native Guard, by Natasha Trethewey

I'm not sure I need to say much about this one—it did win the Pulitzer. But the book will not let me go; I keep coming back to it for the relentless way it questions ideas of history, memory, and humanity.

Stateside, by Jehanne Dubrow

Dubrow's newest book takes us inside the emotional life of a military wife in time of war, a life that (as one section of the book reminds us) traces its roots back to Odysseus's Penelope. The book is not only emotionally powerful, but it is also a fantastic argument for the continued relevance of poetic form; Dubrow is such a master of form that you notice it only as a structure strong enough to support the raw energy driving the poems.

BIO: Holly Karapetkova's poems, essays, and translations from the Bulgarian have appeared in a number of journals. Her first full-length collection of poetry is Words We Might One Day Say from Washington Writers' Publishing House. She is also the author of over 20 books for children. She teaches at Marymount University in Arlington, VA.