“the sun hangs in the sky like a logo”
ALL DAY I DREAM ABOUT SIRENS by Domenica Martinello / Quite appropriate to their obsession (the Sirens of Greek mythology), these poems lure me in and smash me on the rocks.
Category: READING NOTES
Reading notes and personal responses in lieu of poetry book reviews
“something deeply good in us”
THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS by ROSS GAY / Being such a writing process nerd, I was intrigued by the rules Gay established for the delights project, and I love what it seemed to have offered Gay beyond some really great material for a book.
“birth is the first hard frost”
IN THE FIELD BETWEEN US by MOLLY MCCULLY BROWN & SUSANNAH NEVISON / The poems in this book grapple with all the versions of the self, as they are created, as they are destroyed. Embodying reality in any given moment is a moving target.
“we are meant / to lose count”
TO MAKE ROOM FOR THE SEA by ADAM CLAY / It is satisfying to see our human tribulations set among the stars and also be reminded of the something else out there. Somehow, the poems capture both ego and humility.
“the hammock / of my collarbone”
LANDSCAPE WITH PLYWOOD SILHOUETTES by KERRIN MCCADDEN / It’s tempting to say the poems in this collection are “about” divorce, parenting, art, rivers, photos/cameras, ocean, ghosts, loneliness, etc., but it feels more to me to be a book about tenderness. Those other topics/items — grief, cartoons, chairs — are present alongside us as living beings. They’re active in our stories.
“your mouth / was a city i entered dancing.”
EMERGENCY BRAKE by RUTH MADIEVSKY / It’s absolutely appropriate that Jill is the one who pointed me toward this collection: like Jill, Madievsky’s writing is next-level playful and imaginative. Both of them have a gift for freshness with language that’s soooooo enviable. Each analogy makes you wonder what just hit you and if you’ll be lucky enough to be struck again.
“i got a bark too teeth too”
HOMIE by DANEZ SMITH / I deeply admire how exuberance in the poems can’t be untangled from mourning and how Smith crafts so many of the poems in Homie to condemn white supremacy simply by putting it on display: Smith allows it to incriminate itself by its very existence, by its insistence, by its cruelty, what it permeates.