Munich. Carl Hanser Verlag. 2016. 94 pages.The earthly and the man-made interact with one another in Proben von Stein und Licht, a debut collection of poetry by Anja Kampmann that testifies t…
VERSE
- North Adams, Massachusetts. Tupelo Press. 2016. 91 pages.One Hundred Hungers is a book of exile, faith, and acceptance. Of flavor, desire, and violation. Poet Lauren Camp confides in us what…
- Paris. Éditions Grèges. 2015. 108 pages.“Poetry, including the poetry I write, is of no use, no help to anyone. It is theodicy without an object, communion without lips. It is a pure parlance of obvia…
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Cissus World Press. 2015. 88 pages.Dike Okoro’s recent collection of poems, In the Company of the Muse, is a work of substance in which the poet deploys versatile techni…
- Bucharest. Editura Tracus Arte. 2015. 209 pages.This kind of anthology drops readers with modest or no knowledge of the poetry of a nation into a labyrinth in which directions and destinations are far…
- New York. Knopf. 2016. 104 pages. Poet Amit Majmudar’s one-hundred-page book is frequently eloquent, captivating, and powerful; however, it is also partisan, puerile, and facile.One of the best p…
- New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2016. 352 pages.Christopher Logue’s recent volume of poetry, War Music, holds Homer’s deft portrait of the Trojan War up to the present’s light. In the…
- Gurgaon, India. Hachette India. 2015. 376 pages.Having been part of the resurgence of Indian poetry in English that was very much Bombay-centered, Adil Jussawalla brought out a brilliant debut collect…
- Detroit. Wayne State University Press. 2016. 116 pages.If the American critic Stephen Burt’s precepts for reading new poetry—look for a persona and a world, not for an argument or a plot—are to be hee…
- Grewelthorpe, Ripon, UK. Smokestack Books (Dufour Editions, distr.). 2015. 200 pages.Steve Ely’s Englaland evokes postindustrial scenes that become more richly meaningful as he connects the p…
- Brookline, Massachusetts. Zephyr Press. 2015. 144 pages.It’s not uncommon for poets to fill collections with the momento mori of nostalgia, regret, and meditations on the end. Albanian p…
- Durham, North Carolina. Jacar Press. 2015. 68 pages.This masterful collection begins with a foreword in which Gibbons Ruark describes how his association with Ben Kiely awakened his interest in h…
- New York. Akashic Books. 2015. 88 pages.The second title to win the Paz Prize for Poetry—presented by the National Poetry Series and The Center at Miami Dade College to a previously unpublished m…
- Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Press 53. 2016. 204 pages. Mystical and modern, Yahia Lababidi’s Balancing Acts, a collection of poems spanning across a career of decades, tethers togethe…
- Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh Press. 2015. 88 pages.In “Beyond Confession” (2001), Alicia Ostriker insists that a poetry of witness should not only include “history” and “the news” but that it…
- Normal, Illinois. co•im•press. 2015. 376 pages.The title rings true. Juan Gelman’s Oxen Rage embodies tremendous tension (see WLT, Nov. 2013, 28). Submission and anger compete within…
- Brooklyn, New York. Akashic Books, 2015. 103 pages.Born in Jamaica to a pharmacist mother and a policeman father, Colin Channer, an award-winning Caribbean diaspora writer in the US, has published a d…
- Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2015. 103 pages.There is nothing like it in Chicano literature. Rudolfo Anaya’s writing, distinct and unusual since the publication of Bless Me, Última (…
- New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2015. 249 pages.When C. K. Williams died last year, he left behind more than half a century’s worth of superb work as well as a sterling reputation attested to b…
- Tucson, Arizona. Schaffner Press. 2015. 239 pages.We live in a time of brevity. From the truncated language of text messages to the popularity of the 140-word tweet, we have lost our patience for exte…
- London. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2015. 66 pages.“My hands dissolve in water. / My body wastes away. / The air drifts past and through me / Each night and every day. // Bright darkness is my comfort,…
- Rochester, New York. Tiger Bark Press. 2015. 127 pages. In order to achieve inner stillness, one must first withstand turmoil. Experience of a major world war, a fellow writer’s public rejection of hi…
- New York. Chelsea Editions. 2015. 427 pages.To dip into this volume, with its splendid translator’s introduction, is first to connect with a vital Italian poetic tradition. Although Lorenzo Calogero w…
- Hilversum, Netherlands. Tungsten Press. 2015. 30 pages. The world of poetry suffered a deep loss last spring when Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Franz Wright died at sixty-two. Son of James Wright,…
- Brookline, Massachusetts. Zephyr Press. 2014. 123 pages.The poems in Grass Roots speak almost exclusively of the present moment, which in Xiang Yang’s case happens to be the point at which th…