January 20: Marie Howe What the Living Do 1998 (www.norton.com)
Marie Howe transforms this elegy for her brother John who died of AIDS 1988 into both a celebration and a lament for a loved one. All the while she highlights the ordinary parts of our lives when both mourning and recovering.
February 17: Jericho Brown The Tradition 2019 (www.coppercanyonpress.org)
Jericho Brown takes on all sorts of traditions such as Christianity, Greek mythology, institutional violence… As a black gay Southern man, he challenges and in his poems transforms “traditions” that are limiting us and may indeed be killing us.
March 17: Jean Valentine Break the Glass 2010 (www.coppercanyonpress.org)
In Jean Valentine concise poems “the known and familiar become one with the mysterious and half-wild, at a place where consciousness and the subliminal meet.” – Adrienne Rich
April 21: Fady Joudah Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance 2018 (http://www.milkweed.org)
A Palestinian American and physician Joudah writes of exile from and return to homelands of one’s country and one’s body. He is the translator of the esteemed Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
May 19: Aimee Nezhukumatathil Lucky Fish 2011 (www.tupelopress.org)
“Her poems are far-reaching in geographic scope and linguistic imagination…. sensual dreamscapes of allegory and fable, but with a righteous bite and the razor sting of perception. “ Dorianne Laux
June 16: Nicole Sealey Ordinary Beast 2017 (eccobooks.com)
“Nothing ordinary here. But beast? Yeah, that’s it. This thing has teeth.” Patricia Smith
July 21: Reginald Dwayne Betts Felon 2019 (www.norton.com)
Betts captures the complexities of returning to everyday life after incarceration. Especially poignant are his poems of being a father.
Bio:
A believer in the collective voice, I hope to gather a chorus of poetry lovers who love to read and reflect on contemporary poetry. As a family doctor, I delivered hundreds of babies, sutured lots of wounds and listened to many hearts literally and figuratively. I am quiet by nature and love getting transported by books and music. Favorite musicians are Jenny Hval, Zoe Keating, Phoebe Bridges and Arthur Russell. My current pile of poetry books include Jenny Xie, Simone White and Maggie Nelson. My leavening agents are my two sons and two year old grandson.