Carolee Bennett –> poet. artist. crankypants.
THE GALAXY IS A DANCE FLOOR by BIANCA LYNNE SPRIGGS / Sketches — moth, narwhal, astronaut, etc. — appear in a series of “reverie” poems and contribute to the dreamlike, disorienting quality of those poems, which are numbered but presented out of order.
THE WYNONA STONE POEMS by CAKI WILKINSON / I wasn’t sure how I’d do reading an entire book of poems in the third person about a fictional character and her family and community, but Wilkinson really makes it work. Wynona is just as real as any narrator/speaker.
MYSTERIES IN A WORLD THAT THINKS THERE ARE NONE by GARY MCDOWELL / For some reason, even though they aren’t unicorns and rainbows by any stretch, the poems themselves create a lightness, a way of levitating.
SOME PLANET by JAMIE MORTARA / I love the experimentation in this collection. In addition to having several poems titled “experiment,” Mortara’s poems attempt several innovative forms, including a table and flow charts that are twice as wide as the regular pages and need to be unfolded to view.
THERE ARE MORE BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAN BEYONCE by MORGAN PARKER / Part of the magic of this collection is that it could be assumed that the speaker is manipulated by all those forces, influences and expectations, but she puppets them instead. The speaker makes forces act the way she wants and say what she wants to say. She has heard their propaganda and uses their same words against them.
EVERY ROOM IN THE BODY by KERRI FRENCH / This book isn’t “just” about a high-risk pregnancy. It’s also about how we experience the world when we have something else that’s consuming us, the way time passes (or doesn’t) when we are preoccupied, the way we can be, as they say, of the world but not in it.
SOMETHING LIKE FORGIVENESS by REBECCA SCHUMEJDA / As a single long poem about a family tragedy, it’s a massive undertaking both emotionally and poetically, and she hits it out of the park. This book is engaging. It’s breathtaking. Her torment is palpable. I paused more than once to cry. I put the book down and sobbed.