Norman, Oklahoma. Mezcalita Press. 2019. 142 pages.
In this, his twentieth volume of poetry, Nathan Brown has done something unusual: one hundred poems, one for each of one hundred years; one hundred…
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Kolkata. Hawakal. 2019. 63 pages. RaSh’s fascinating collection of poems draws immediate attention to its title. One only needs to turn over and read the first poem to understand the politics behind i…
Brookline, Massachusetts. Zephyr Press. 2019. 147 pages. Since she was still a child when the Soviet Union broke up, perhaps it is no wonder that in this volume of poetry Kazakhstani poet Aigerim Taz…
Sandpoint, Idaho. Lost Horse Press. 2019. 103 pages. This useful translation of poems, culled from six books by renowned Ukrainian author Yuri Izdryk, makes the most of the facing-page translation for…
Philipsburg, St. Martin. House of Nehesi. 2019. 53 pages. The latest poetic effort of the revolutionary poet of St. Martin, Lasana M. Sekou, drags us into the whirlwind of his words right from the sta…
Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Press 53. 2019. 89 pages. Hedy Habra’s The Taste of the Earth invites us into complex worlds of different cultural pasts and presents, where existential anxiet…
Todmorden, United Kingdom. Arc. 2019. 83 pages. This important book is the first English-language anthology of poetry written by Rohingya poets, and these vital poems command our attention, memoriali…
Toronto. Mawenzi House. 2019. 84 pages. Seldom is someone a keeper of deep cultural knowledge and a gifted poet. Joseph A. Dandurand is both. SH:LAM (The Doctor) is “Indigenous Knowl…
Minneapolis. Coffee House Press. 2019. 77 pages. Who is allowed to call themself an American? When a crowd of thousands of white faces shout for an approving President Trump to “Send her back!” in ref…
New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2019. 87 pages. One Lark, One Horse takes its title from an anecdote that poet Michael Hofmann supplies in the front matter of the book. Not to steal the…
New York. New Directions. 2019. 80 pages. Throughout this newest collection, Dunya Mikhail writes poems of cities, friends, grandmothers, goddesses, of girls who might “outgrow / their dresses / while…
Toronto. House of Anansi Press. 2018. 112 pages. River Woman—profoundly personal, politically charged, playful and burning with love and loss—is a brilliant poetic work by Governor General’s…
Louisville, Kentucky. Sarabande Books. 2019. 98 pages. Historical reenactments have gained a burgeoning popularity recently. According to Jenny Thompson, author of War Games (2004), more than…
New York. W. W. Norton. 2019. 128 pages. This newest collection by Dorianne Laux includes selections from her five previous books of poetry and thirty-two pages of new poetry, some of her best to date…
Madrid. Amagord Ediciones. 2018. 281 pages. Los huesos de mi abuelo teaches me things about our terra, flora, and fauna that it seems I have only passively understood. “The sound of the first…
Durham, North Carolina. Duke University Press. 2019. 144 pages. Renato Rosaldo established himself as an ethno-poet with his groundbreaking 2013 volume The Day of Shelly’s Death, which combin…
Minneapolis. Graywolf Press. 2019. 72 pages. Much of the narrative arc—and indeed art—of Emily Skaja’s debut collection, Brute, is marked in the first poem of the book. There is skillful sou…
South Bend, Indiana. Action Books. 2019. 105 pages. There is poetry that tries hard to be poetic, and there is poetry that tries hard not to be poetic. Kim Yideum’s poetry is the second sort. Yet poe…
Lincoln. University of Nebraska Press. 2019. 90 pages. Embattled Representative Ilhan Omar recently said of herself and her fellow freshman congresswomen of color, “We are not there to be quiet. We ar…
Kolkata. Hawakal. 2018. 64 pages. Huzaifa Pandit lives in Kashmir, India, a region under turmoil from two hostile nations that have kept this beautiful land locked in. Never a day goes by without sho…
Minneapolis. Graywolf Press. 2019. 76 pages. This book-length series of poems, Ilya Kaminsky’s second collection, is written as two progressively darkening acts of a play set in the imaginary town of…
Toronto, Ontario. Mawenzi House. 2018. 112 pages. Reading Sasenarine Persaud’s newest collection, Monsoon on the Fingers of God, is like stepping inside a clock and running a thumb along eac…
Washington, DC. Scarith. 2018. 92 pages. Panna Naik’s The Astrologer’s Sparrow is a sonorous collection of poems drawn from her eleven verse collections published between 1976 (The Beginn…
Hexham, United Kingdom. Bloodaxe Books (Distr. Dufour Editions). 2019. 128 pages. Days of Grace is an ascension, lifting the reader through three sections through silence into clouds and fin…
Fayetteville, New York. Bitter Oleander Press. 2018. 97 pages. Italian poet Franca Mancinelli’s The Little Book of Passage, with facing-page translation by John Taylor, exemplifies the best p…