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 Lahey's brand new While Supplies Last, which has almost everything in it, including some amazing traffic reports.

Alice Oswald's Nobody has been living in this stack for a few years now and I don't see moving it out anytime soon. 

At the top are Carl Phillips's My Trade is Mystery and the earlier collection Double Shadow; look for a post on these soon over at Concrete & River.

Happy May!