Chicken Spaghetti

Favorite Poetry and Poetry-Related Books of the Year

The following are some of my favorites of the year, with links to their publishers. (Not all were published in 2022.) For additional reading suggestions, do check out another, completely current list, "A Handful of Poetry Books to Savor Now and Later," by Mandana Chaffa, in the Chicago Review of Books. 

Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me, by Ada Calhoun (Grove Atlantic, 2022)

Avidly Reads Poetry, by Jacquelyn Ardam (NYU Press, 2022)

Broadway for Paul, by Vincent Katz (Knopf, 2020)

Curb, by Divya Victor (Nightboat Books, 2021)

Customs, by Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf, 2022)

The Difference Is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems, edited by Al Filreis and Anna Strong Safford (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

Frank: Sonnets, by Diane Seuss (Graywolf, 2021)

Garden Time, by W.S. Merwin (Copper Canyon, 2016)

The Hurting Kind, by Ada Limón (Milkweed Editions, 2022)

Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance, by Nikki Grimes (Bloomsbury Books for Children, 2021)

Lorine Niedecker: A Poet’s Life, by Margot Peters (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011)

On Autumn Lake: The Collected Essays, by Douglas Crase (Nightboat Books, 2022). I'm still reading this one!

Starshine & Clay, by Kamilah Aisha Moon (Four Way Books, 2017)

Stones: Poems, by Kevin Young (Knopf, 2021)

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, by Franny Choi (Ecco, 2022)

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The Poetry Friday roundup for December 30th is at Patricia J. Franz's Reverie.

Photo by ST of street art by Timur (@timuryorkart).

Ashley Bryan & Langston Hughes

The above collage is original art from Sail Away, a 2015 children's book in which Ashley Bryan illustrated poems by Langston Hughes dealing with the theme of water. It's part of a gorgeous show at the Morgan Library & Museum, in New York, through January 22, 2023. You can also read "Long Trip" in a bigger font at at the Academy of American Poets. My friend and I had the best time at the Morgan, chit-chatting with a friendly security guard about our favorite pictures and taking several turns around the room to make sure of our choices. 

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The Poetry Friday roundup takes place at Irene Latham's Live Your Poem on December 23rd. Happy Holidays to all!

Poem: Open Space

Open Space

Tell us about your friends
You mean M.C.? Who danced on tables
and lit the night up loud
with his Long Island accent?
That friend? I still tend the mug,
a favor, from the prom
He was the teacher, I was the gossip,
The chaperone’s date
They didn’t know
The truth, we were never together
That way though I would
give anything to hear him sing
“There’s a kind of hush”
At the fountain at
Washington Square Park
“All over the world
tonight”

Draft, Susan Thomsen, 2022

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This poem riffs off a line from my feed reader. Last week I wrote about how the New York Times "Well" feed sometimes resembles a font of poetry prompts, so I ran with its offering "Tell us about your friends." All week long the next sentence in my head has been, "You mean M.C.?," so that is indeed what came next. I continue to tinker with this draft.

I have a nonfiction recommendation on the theme of friendship: Hua Hsu's Stay True: A Memoir, which I'm reading now. It's making all the best-of lists.

The Poetry Friday roundup is at Karen Edmisten's blog on December 16th. Enjoy!

Photo by ST

Poetry Prompts from the New York Times

The New York Times and I have a long, one-sided relationship that includes a very sniffy rejection letter for a job I applied for ages ago. Whatever. It's still my favorite paper. Lately it has been sending me poetry prompts for which I am very grateful. I should explain. Every day in my feed reader I get the headlines (and links) for articles in the Well section, and many of them seem like the beginnings of poems. (A few also sound spectacularly unrelated to wellness, but I digress.)

Some examples:

Sadder but wiser? Maybe not

With this weed, I thee wed

Your cat might not be ignoring you when you speak

Tell us about your friends

Falling for your sperm donor

No more hiding

Aren't they great! I really want to hear the poems that start with these first lines. At a certain point I have to start writing them, right?

Anyway. Another source of inspiration has been The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, the new book by Franny Choi. I'm in the middle of reading it, and my favorite line so far is "Every day of my life has been something other than my last." from one of the poems with the (same) title "Upon Learning That Some Korean War Refugees Used Partially Detonated Napalm Canisters as Cooking Fuel." This is powerful work, y'all.

The Poetry Friday roundup for December 9th is at artist & author Michelle Kogan's blog.

Photo: "Iced Tea at the Diner," by ST

Eraser

Happy December, everyone. Where has the time gone? I don't know what happened to November.

Recently I participated in a small-group chat about "Do not trust the eraser," by Rosamond S. King. It's amazing much discussion how this shorter, open-ended poem generated. It starts,

Do not trust the eraser. Prefer
crossed out, scribbled over monuments

I hadn't known King's work at all beforehand, and having read more of the pieces linked on her website here, I find it really powerful. Frankly, I'd enjoy continuing to talk about "Do not trust the eraser," so, if you'd like, let me know what you think! A couple of questions, just to get started: who or what is the eraser? What do you make of the punctuation? Why "mis takes" and not "mistakes?" There are no wrong answers, of course; these are just things in the work that I wonder about.

The December 2nd Poetry Friday roundup is at Reading to the Core.

Photo by ST: Pencil (with eraser) sculpture, Bridgeport, CT