Books like tsunami vs. the fukushima 50

The poems in this book made me feel glad to be alive in a world that feels like it’s ending. I loved how Jones situated personal grief within disasters of national and international scale; grieving a mother is as monumental as grieving a world. 

I also found it compelling how Jones consistently maintains a musical quality to the poems’ language. The first two lines of, 'Saeed, How Dare You Make Your Mother into a Prelude', are: "And then, night neons itself inside me / and I begin missing you in loud new ways.”

Multisensory with pleasing consonance, these lines are a small sample of Jones’s linguistic verve. Full of wit and sincerity, these poems made me want to write my own defiant love letter to the apocalypse. 

This book is the blueprint. From the concept—persona poems and scenes from New Orleans, told from the perspective of Hurricane Katrina—to the flawless execution of that concept, this book is a must-read for understanding disasters.

I loved the sustained attention to the storm and the people and the way that Smith finds fresh ways to create the scenes before, during, and after the storm. I loved Katrina the persona, too, as much as I feared her destructiveness. Her rage and vengeance felt entirely real, and the poems made me want to walk the earth as if every step would shatter the ground. This book lives up to its succinct, evocative title. 

What I love most about this collection is how it begins with an ending: printed on the inside jacket flap of the book is the end poem, 'The End of Poetry,' which demands an end to the intangibles of poetic clichés and calls instead for physical sensation.

The intense desire to be touched is heightened with the COVID-19 pandemic hanging over each poem; the pandemic is never named, but I felt the ache of social distancing. The pandemic is another kind of catastrophe, one that is tenderly and vividly captured in this book.

What I love most about this book is the strident, confident way the poems tackle our expectations about prose and poetic genres. Right from the collection's first poem, the book says that language is only the beginning; it still has its limits, though it can achieve longevity in the right conditions. 

However, my favorite poem of the collection is 'Shakespeare Doesn't Care,' a poem where Dove imagines Shakespeare’s confident, coy response to comments on his prolific, inimitable career. In doing so, she highlights how his work points the finger of judgment through time. Dove does this, too.

This is not a book of portents, nor is it strictly a celebration or mourning of an apocalyptic world; instead, it highlights the strange echoes of history.

I love how crystalline and to the absolute point these poems are. “Where do I begin/being a minimalist?” the poet writes. These poems make me see the world in a fresh but very relatable way. “What would I/think, coming/up after/my world/had evaporated?/I’d wish/I were water."

So much said, so few words. The longing is implicit. This book is home to breathtaking lyricism–as well as narrative poems of mystery, loss, and wonder. It is a book I keep coming back to.

There are so few books available about trail building. Riprap might be the oldest and one of the most beautiful. Riprap poetically describes Snyder’s summer trail-building job in 1955 in Yosemite National Park. These poems not only sing about the beauty and physicality of trail building but also echo back on the ancient Chinese poets who Snyder was studying during that time. In the end, Riprap shows us trail building but also illuminates how wildness can infuse the human spirit.

Like Daniel, young kids may have heard the word “poetry,” but what exactly is a poem? 

The collage illustrations will draw you in as Daniel takes a walk through the park asking creatures, “what is poetry,” the spider answers, saying, "to me poetry is when morning dew glistens.” Or maybe it’s “moonlight on the grass.” Daniel finds that poetry is different things to different animals, and he learns that to find his poem all he has to do is look around and listen. A perfect introduction to poetry!

By showcasing the rich tradition of queer poets whose writing is inspired by nature, Queer Nature opens up the nature poetry genre.

It is the book I needed twenty years ago when I began writing poetry. In my search for queer role models I was happy to find Mary Oliver, Kay Ryan, and Elizabeth Bishop but little did I know how many others were hiding in plain sight. This expansive anthology presents up to 200 more poets from 150 years ago to the present day, with a moving introduction by editor Michael Walsh.

Funny, sad, complex, and direct; the poems explore exclusion and alienation as well as love and belonging. Above all else this anthology confirms that poetry is as boundless as nature and that together they belong to everyone.

Shara Lessley and I met in Amman, Jordan, during the Arab Spring—both of us American writers whose husbands worked at the embassy. Poetry is not a staple of my reading diet, but Lessley’s poems are small, crystalline stories that perfectly encapsulate what it is like to be an American woman living in the Middle East during a time of potential instability. This volume is slim, but the Jordan that emerges is vast and unforgettable.

Kelly Norman Ellis is the Chairperson for the Department of English, Foreign Languages, and Literatures at Chicago State University. And like those who have made the “Great Migration” before her, she too has taken the South with her in this wonderful debut collection of poetry. In this book, she deftly taps into the Blues ethos to conjure vivid imagery of a Mississippi unique with its patois, cuisine, and customs that have unmistakably shaped her worldview as an adult. It was the South that would try to degrade and dehumanize Black life. But it was the same South where family and a village would instill pride, confidence, and self-worth. This is a book of a poet coming to terms with where she has come from and celebrating the journey. It reinforces the notion that everywhere you go, home is already there.