Last Day of April aka Poetry Month
Every month is poetry month where I live, which pretty much means I'm always revising the stacks of am-reading and to-be-read books around my reading chair. Currently in the former: The bright green spine second from the bottom, Tolstoy Together , is something I'm especially excited by: documentation of an early-pandemic-era online group reading of War and Peace, hosted by Yiyun Li. For awhile in the mid-2010s I was part of a group reading that novel aloud; that ended for me when a family emergency called me away. I didn't know about the online group till it was too late to join in; this book is double the joy. The "new and complete translations" of Rilke's Duino Elegies are by Alfred Corn, and while the production values of the paperback are atrocious, the poems are brilliantly alive. It's right beside Annick McAskill's surprising and tender Shadow Blight, from the always-beautifully-made-books publisher Gaspereau Press. And just above it, Anita Lah