And no, we are not referring to the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, although, actually, I love those giant anthologies that Norton has made for decades. And Diane Seuss references the Anthology in her latest book of collected poems, Modern Poetry. This is a collection that ruminates on modern poetry as one of its main…
…assuming that the retiree is a book nerd. Most of the people around me these days are. And if you walk into the bookshop where I work, I am going to assume your friend or family member is a book nerd of the sort we usually get at the shop (unless you tell me otherwise,…
I am on hiatus. Which is why I am making book recommendations for April a week into April. I will give you this much (and a few other blogs) and then disappear again for another week or so. Life. April is Easter, at least this year. (What’s with the lunar date thing?) I have yet…
The cover. That’s what a lot of reviews mention because, well, most people expected to read one kind of thing based on the cover and then got something else. Myself, I read Miss Iceland by Audur Ava Olafsdottir (ohd-thur ah-vah oh-lahfs-dah-tur—ish) because it was a book club read for one of the clubs I am…
Over the holidays I went to a number of book-related holiday parties. This is not usual for me. In 2024, I joined six book clubs, only two of which I moved to the “casual” signification, as well as two writing groups. Well, when you do that, apparently there’s a lot more to do in December.…
I would recommend that if you haven’t already, don’t read the synopses (at least the one on Goodreads) for Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. There is just one line of explanation that—if you are very observant and have a good memory—could destroy your experience of the book. Because there is a twist of sorts, and the…
“If you reached down / and took the roof off this house / you’d see a human on the couch / worrying about things he has no / control over. We’re just like anyone / else is what I mean. And someone’s / got our roof in his hand.” -Christopher Citro
Sure, a fever dream. Absurdism, related—in time and space and feeling—to DeLillo’s White Noise, which I read last month. But sometimes clear, or clear enough. Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate was not a collected book of poetry like I would expect. I mean, its meanings were hidden enough (sometimes so deep I…
I know that technically Easter will have passed by the time it’s April this year (by one day), but that’s not normal, so it’s no wonder I missed it when I was writing the What to Read in March blog. I suppose it doesn’t matter much, anyway, as I have almost no books to recommend…
I am trying out some book clubs (which I will blog about shortly). The very first one that I went to had just read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, which was convenient because I read it a few years ago and just read my own review before checking the group out with pretty…
Since The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling is in the public domain, I thought that I would include a poem from it as a Read Me. One of my favorite moments in the book is the “Seal Song” that begins “The White Seal” short story. Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,…
When I was a fellow at a writing conference in the summer of 2021, I came home with a list of books to read. Some of them were craft-related, some of them obliquely craft-related, and some of them were written by authors who read out at the conference and who I wanted to both read…
I do not recall what I was doing that led me to this list (I’m sure it had something to do with the poetry unit I was teaching my ninth-ish graders), but the list of favorite poems by famed authors excited me. I thought, I want to read through that list. (I am a real…
Another month, another book that I am reviewing because I taught it to my ninth grade(ish) co-op students. I can’t remember how I found this poetry anthology last summer, but I am sure glad that I did. Rather than have to pull poems from the whole world of poetry or require the students to purchase…
I’m not averse to a story in which animals are personified. I’m not averse to a story in which animals are personified but being sneaky about it right under the nose of unsuspecting humans. But there was something about The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate that somehow defied both these categorizations and got…
I came across The Random House Book of Poetry (1983) when I was checking out as much as I could from the library from Arnold Lobel. Officially, it is a collection from both old and newer poets, as edited by the Children’s Poet Laureate, Jack Prelutsky, and just illustrated by Arnold Lobel, but since it’s…
Woah, this list took me a long time to scrape together. Please don’t make too much of it (as I have not read the vast majority of the books), but I wanted a place to start with titles that didn’t appear in my largely American- and Western European-heavy best books lists. This list is not…
For the best books list of poetry, I broke the list into poets, books of poetry, and anthologies. It’s hard to separate one from another, but I didn’t want to just grab best books of poetry when a beloved poet might not get included. I also didn’t want to skip over all the great poetry…
Here is a list of my top twelve favorite books, out of the small fraction of total books in the world that I have actually read. I am an avid reader, but I just don’t have tons of time to sit around and read. Plus, there are plenty of books I have enjoyed, but they…
the starving artist 