Looking for a new poet’s work to read, or to give to the poet in your life? We’ve selected the best recently published solo collections here. (Although they are numbered, we have NOT ranked our choices by “quality” or any other criterion. New books will appear here as we review them -- browse our Poetry Store for a comprehensive list of all the books we’ve reviewed.)
1. Some Angels Wear Black, by Eli Coppola
(Manic D Press, 2005) Five years after Eli Coppola’s death, editor David West and publisher Jenny Joseph have gathered a selection from the five out-of-print small press chapbooks published during her lifetime, added a sequence of unpublished poems culled from manuscripts, letters & friends, and made a gift to the world of Some Angels Wear Black. Brava! Eli did the work of a poet in her short lifetime, creating beauty from personal knowledge & polished words, and this book is a fitting legacy.2. Directed by Desire, The Collected Poems of June Jordan
(Copper Canyon Press, 2005) Directed by Desire gives us 649 pages of love. Jordan, who died in 2002, wrote poems that speak directly and colloquially, equal parts humor and politics, love poems and rants. To read the Collected Jordan is to read a history of the US, 1969 - 2002. It was a helluva time. And the editors (who, in true selfless June style, don’t even put their names on the cover) Jan Heller Levi and Sara Miles, have created a helluva book: fitting, on time, and essential.3. The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan
(University of California Press, 2005) The gorgeous The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California Press, November 2005), edited by his widow Alice Notley and sons Anselm and Edmund Berrigan, finally gets all the Ted words back in line and open face and also a few uncollected as well. Sure feels good, 749 pages, and clear as a bell. The bell being the one Robert Creeley referred to when he wrote of this seminal figure of the New York School: “The bell rings. Ted is ready.”4. Smoking Lovely, by Willie Perdomo
(Book + CD, Rattapallax Press, 2003) Smoking Lovely reads like a novel -– a descent into street drug hell, some light, an ascension, a way out with poetry as guide. “Write What You Know” is a conclusive Perdomo poem, and Sister, that he does: tough, gritty, bold, smart (too smart?), and full of life, despair, joy.5. ZataarDiva, by Suheir Hammad
(Book + CD, Rattapallax Press, 2006) Suheir Hammad’s breakthrough, ZataarDiva (Cypher/Rattapallax, forthcoming February 2006), may be the best blend of book/CD ever, primarily because Suheir is such a generous soul that when she kicks a poem it’s like you’re on the sofa with her. She’s just talking. Suheir’s poetry: it’s all courage, all human, all political push. She’s the jazz of Brooks, the hiphop of Tupac, the humor of Hagedorn.6. The Maverick Room, by Thomas Sayers Ellis
(Graywolf Press, 2004) There’s just no describing Ellis –- he jazzes june, the pain thin as a paper cut, evanescent, ever-present, dirty, intellectual. Since his days with Dark Room Collective, Ellis has always been a poet to watch. Now he’s a poet to read, to listen to, to study. The book’s last two poems, “Groovallegiance” and “All Their Stanzas Look Alike,” are harrowing, brilliant, and utterly owned by orality even as the text represents and poetry is served.
7. The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, by Frank Stanford
(Lost Roads, 2000) What can you say about a 400-page book that is not only a single poem but a single sentence? Seeing through the eyes of a mindreading poet-type Ozark kid who hangs out across the race line is like discovering a new language. A beautiful new version of the long out-of-print classic -- if you buy one for a gift, you’d better buy one for yourself, ’cause you’ll never give it away.8. New Addresses, by Kenneth Koch
(Knopf, 2001) Awarded the new Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Prize in its first year, this collection addresses elements of Koch’s personal history in witty apostrophes both informal in tone & deep enough to reward rereading. “To My Twenties,” “To Jewishness,” “To Breath”... Koch infuses life into what could be chilly, formal orations, with delightful results.9. View with a Grain of Sand, Selected Poems by Wislawa Szymborska
(Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak & Clare Cavanagh, Harvest Books, 1995) This selection of poems from seven of her books is a wonderful introduction to Szymborska, who is not well known in the West even after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1996. The English translations are elegant & the poems are transcendent revelations, irony, incantation, crystal, wit.10. Coming Up for Air, by Margaret Randall
(Pennywhistle Press, 2001) The first in Pennywhistle’s Compendium Series, which combines selected poems with the poet’s life story in prose & photos. Randall’s work is especially well suited to this treatment, and the poems here tackle many moments in her fascinating life: her years in Cuba and Nicaragua, childhood sexual abuse, coming out as a lesbian, and her case with the INS.