Look Like You Know Your $hit 2014 Poetry as Gifts Guide

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2014 Poetry Collections, a note passed to superman, A Whole New World, Ahsahta Press, Aladdin, Alaska, Alice James Books, Anne Ferry, Apiology with Stigma, Bad NDN, Black Ocean, Carrie Olivia Adams, Claudia Emerson, Clay Matthews, Commonplace Invasions, contraband of hoopoe, Copper Canyon, Dan Vera, Dancing Girl Press, Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower, Ewa Chrusciel, Figure Studies, Forty One Jane Doe's, Graywolf Press, Hanging Loose Press, Happenstance, Helena Nelson, holiday gift giving guide, HOT TOPIC, How a Poem Happens, Jo Pitkin, Julie Funderburk, Kelly Andrews, Lavender Ink/Dialogos, Letras Latinas, Look Like You know Your Shit, Louisiana small press, LSU Press, Mad Honey Symposium, Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Mule-Skinner, NOLA poetry, Omnidawn, Plot and CounterPlot, Poem for Plutocrats, poetheads, Rachel Piercey, Red Hen, Rivers Wanted, Sabotage Reviews, Sally Wen Mao, Salmon Poetry, Sarah Lindsay, Scandlous, sexy christmas elf, Sherman Alexie, southern lit, Southern Messenger Poets, Speaking Wiri Wiri, Split This Rock, Starlight on Water, Steven Scafidi, supernatural, The Cabinetmaker's Window, The Emma Press, The Leviathan of Parsonstown, The Light That Shines Inside Us, The Overhaul, The Title of the Poem, Thoughts to Fold Into Birds, To Whoever Set My Truck on Fire, Unicorn Press, What I've Stolen What I've Earned, women poets

Yes, it is that time of year again, friends….the time of ‘best of’ lists and holiday buying hives. Ok, maybe that’s not you, but you really, really want to impress that super hot poet that lives down the hall or maybe deigns to talk to you in the Starbucks line you happen to keep timing just right so as to consistently run into him/her.

Or maybe, you are married to one of these poethead monsters.  Or gasp! You are one of those word-flingers.

 

Sexy-Christmas-Elf-me can practically guarantee to get you a good snog under the mistletoe, if you will wrap up  a few of these (mostly) 2014 collections.

From AHSAHTA PRESS

Forty-One Jane Doe’s

This is actually a Spring 2013 release that made it into my basket early this year, but boy am I glad that it did.  Combining a print book with a DVD of short films, this combo from  Carrie Olivia Adams (better known as poetry editor for Black Ocean) is definitely a keeper.

Love this tagline:  “A woman knows her body . . . until it is exploded into a multitude of Janes.”

 

from ALICE JAMES

Mad Honey Symposium

Sally Wen Mao‘s May-released debut stunner. Feast your eyes on lines from “Apiology, with Stigma” HERE

I Know! Your eyes are totally blown out of your head.

 

Moving on to 2 Titles from COPPER CANYON  

Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower

Sarah Lindsay delves into skeleton-eating worms, sweet potato and squid with brief jaunts to Iraq

Read “The Leviathan of Parsonstown” here

 

 

Sun-Bear  also from Copper Canyon

Matthew Zapruder‘s 4th collection, another zinger from one of Cali’s hottest poets

Check out “Poem for Plutocrats”

 

 

and don’t forget my go-to press DANCING GIRL bringing us…

 

Mule-Skinner by

Kelly Andrews, coeditor of Pretty Owl Poetry/economic journalist, delivering a kick-ass first chapbook plus she loves cats. What’s not to like?

Read a sample poem at the purchase link above.

 

And from (The) EMMA PRESS, one of the cooolest small presses in the UK…

Rivers Wanted

Rachel Piercey’s 2nd pub with EP, but her first full-length pamphlet, bringing every bit of her gobsmacking wit and charm to a head.

Check out the great write-up from Sabotage Reviews here.

from GRAYWOLF PRESS

The Overhaul

Ok, a bit of a cheat.  This is forthcoming Feb. 2015, but I just love the Scottish hell out of Kathleen Jamie and couldn’t help but put this up even without a pre-order button. Why is there no pre-order button?

Oh well, buy this as soon as it’s out.

 

then there is this ball-buster from HANGING LOOSE PRESS

What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned

Sherman Alexie is hands-down the baddest NDN around with multi-genre superpowers, and I basically want to be him when I grow up, only better-looking in a dress, which should be red with imitation feathers.

 

from HAPPENSTANCE  (another small press from across the pond)

Starlight on Water and Plot and Counter-Plot

These pamphlets are actually from 2003 and 2010, but I’ve only just discovered Helena Nelson through performance circles, so bear with me.

Both of these babies rock the cover art and feature marvellous poems.

from LAVENDER INK/DIALOGOS 

The Light That Shines Inside Us

Marguerite Guzman Bouvard‘s poems so good they should have their own shrine. And I am I totally not just saying that because this is like my favorite NOLA based press. Who Dat, Y’all!!

 

from LSU PRESS  (Purple and Gold, Baby)

The Cabinetmaker’s Window from the sexy poet-carpenter who is all over the Southern lit magazines. Love me some Steven Scafidi.

Read “To Whoever Set My Truck on Fire” at How a Poem Happens and see.  See!

Now buy the book and

also snap up

Figure Studies by

Claudia Emerson

which pairs really well with Forty-One Jane Doe’s  from above [top of the list]

 

then again, you can’t really go wrong with most of the Southern Messenger Poets series 

 

 same goes for Ewa Chrusciel, whose latest from OMNIDAWN 

 

contraband of hoopoe has just the right mix of art and ritual to make you want to do research and never stop traveling even if it’s all just in your mind

 

well, that doesn’t really do her justice.  just pick up the book and work your way into her genius.

 

RED HEN also has a stunner with its 2013 Winner of the inaugural Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize

Speaking Wiri Wiri by Dan Vera

is good, good, good stuff

Hear him read here. Funny, charming. Brave experimenter with language.

[Dude, I know it was on Split This Rock’s recommended list from last year, but I just got it…so now I’m telling you it’s good. LOL]

 

from SALMON POETRY

Commonplace Invasions by

Jo Pitkin, is a must-have.  She has been accused of “bewitching” her readers, but in the best possible way. 🙂

Everything out of Salmon Poetry is top-notch.

 

and from UNICORN PRESS

Thoughts to Fold Into Birds by

Julie Funderburk

“grounded in the coastal carolina’s wind, sun, and sea”

ahhhhhhhhhhhh. small press goodness from NC.

 

Also, you’ll look really, really smart if you buy and then read….

 

The Title of the Poem by

Anne Ferry

Seriously, though, this will open up a whole new world. Trust me!!!!

BadA$$ Asian-American Poetry Finds

Tags

Alice James Books, Apiology with Stigma, Arlen Kim, Asian American Journal, Asian Literary Review, Asian-American poets, BadA$$ Asian-American Poets, Bao Phi, Blackbird, Cave Wall, Cha, Coffee House Press, Drunken Boat, Eastlit, Ed Bok Lee, Floating Brilliant Gone, Franny Choi, Godzilla Sestina, Hyphen Magazine, Kartika, Mad Honey Symposium, Milkweed Editions, Next Generation Asian-American Poetry, Papers Suns, performance poet, Pop Goes Korea, Quietly Bananas, Red Dragonfly Press, Sally Wen Mao, Song I Sing, Victoria Chang, What Have You Done to Our Ears to Make Us Hear Things, Whorled, Write Bloody, You Bring Out the Vietnamese in Me

With the definition of “Asian-American” constantly in flux, broader and broader intersections of ethnicity have begun to fall under this umbrella.  In the poetry realm, there has been a surge in new work from Korean-, Vietnamese- and mixed race-Americans. And while I’ve only just begun to investigate this fascinating universe, I’ve found some truly BadA$$ work that simply must be shared. (My picks followed by a quick list of where to find new poems.)

 

MY TOP FIVE:

1. Sally Wen Mao, who first came to my attention several years ago when she hit the pages of Cave Wall and Drunken Boat and now has a new collection out with Alice James Books.

From Mad Honey Symposium:

APIOLOGY, WITH STIGMA

      Stigma, n. (in flowers) the female part of the pistil
that receives pollen during pollination

For Melissa W.

There is no real love in the apiary.
Hive mentality: 1. Fatten until you reign

your country on a throne of propolis.
2. Copulate until you explode

with larval broods. Honey makes me sick,
and so does the Queen Bee. Even

in sleep, I see the arrows point at drones
stuck to the ceiling, sparkling spastically

like the sequins on a girl’s yellow prom
dress. Some girls pray to be Queen.

They think: wouldn’t it be terrific, to be
wanted like that. Wouldn’t it be terrific

to be stroked and adored, to lose your virginity
in the glorious aftermath of royal jelly.

Wouldn’t be terrific to roost, rest, be the envy
and the mother of all. But one girl turns

the other way. At lunch she eats green tea mochi
on the edge of the field, scouts unpopulated

places—a lemon tree, a barberry bush.
Dreading assemblies and cafeterias, she ducks

under the library’s front steps, smuggling
field guides or National Geographics

with covers of jewel beetles and capybaras,
counting the minutes until recess is over

and biology begins. The price of sincerity:
when the honeybee shucks the anthers

from the camellia, an anthem begins.
It’s a slow soprano. An anathema. It screams…

Full TEXt

 

2. Performance Poet and activist Bao Phi. 

 

From Sông I Sing (Coffee House Press)

GODZILLA SESTINA

Under the ocean where I was created
in a womb of dancing atoms, a tectonic tale
is breaking the skin of sea floor. Dreams burn here:
lava flows underwater like bleeding fireballs,
sunless sleep disturbed as they listened
for the sound of the nightmares they dropped.

Fat Man and the Little Boy drop,
like two suns tumbling, sent to destroy creation,
no one will be left alive to listen
for the lessons we need to learn from this tale,
just a skyline made of a blossoming fireball
and a symphony of silenced screams horrible beyond…

FULL TEXT

3. Poet/Teacher/Artist Franny Choi

from her collection Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody)

TEXT HERE

 

 

4. Arlene Kim 

also known as @quietlybananas

reading “Curse”

from What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?(Milkweed Editions)

I am also rather fond of this one, originally published at Blackbird:

PAPER SUNS

My love. I tended him
after he fell. His charred wing stumps,
his elegy of scabbed feathers. Only then
would he accept a bed, me
in it. The memory burnt into his limbs
burned me, too, so that only my negative remained
in what amputated dreams he had, what
eerie ornithology haunted him. My hybrid,
neither bird nor angel—I came
to gather what boy there was left
to salvage.

I fold him paper suns, light them
on fire, hurl them skyward,
a revenge I can offer.
For a moment, the sun in his face,
twinned in his eyes.
For a moment, not the sun, but his face,
its reflection like the sun,
like an old story. In the water,
another sky, a ghost sun.
He didn’t know at first
if he was falling or…

FULL TEXT HERE

5. Award-wining poet & playwright Ed Bok-Lee (looking all cool with his super snazzy website)

 

Excerpt from Whorled (Coffee House Press)

 

On the other side of the world, there is a language I have never heard
It is beautiful, and in this dying tongue, there are words for Love and God
that resemble Bread and Wing
Or another forest language in which Mother and Knife

equal Drawer and Sing
And Island Wood is somewhere Desert Milk
And Berry, elsewhere is a Door
And if you added up all these dying words, and the people who speak them

All their memories, histories, and lessons
All their gods, jokes, rituals, and recipes
If you learned and stirred them, over and again, until
each utterance became a star, a new footprint, the marrow of a poem—

*originally appeared on Broadside from Red Dragonfly Press

See his website (linked above) for more poems.

 

 

 

Find new poets to fall in love with in:

Victoria Chang’s Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation anthology

Poetry Magazine’s Asian-American Voices in Poetry (with links)

And these journals:

Cha: An Asian Literary Journal
Kartika Review
EastLit
Asian American Journal
Asia Literary Review
Lantern Review
Hyphen Magazine

You can also consult my Kick-Butt Asian-American Poets list (name pared down for Amazon filters), which is itself always in flux.

 

Happy reading!!! And be sure to share your finds in the comments.