I could not make it another year, in any year, without the poets. My teachers, my friends, my muses.
As I breach the second part of a three-part look at my favorite reads of the year (check out Part 1, nonfiction here), I do so with a full heart and new words swirling about my life.
Here, my favorite poetry books of 2023, alphabetical by author:
Lauren Camp, “An Eye in Each Square” / Camp considers artists and their art with a sort of luminous clarity, fulfilling so many of my closely-cherished ideals in a fashion I’ve yet to touch. Her poems see the artist—here especially, the painter Agnes Martin—as most themselves within the gesture and the mark; Camp’s poems convene a conversation with these meaning-making symbols, learning something about the creator only poetry may approach.
Anders Carlson-Wee “Disease of Kings” / Carlson-Wee leads his readers into the particular weather of a friendship conducted along the tenuous line between American dreams and harsh realities. He harnesses the spiritual lightning found in deposit bottles, desperate feasts and embodied promises.
Megan Fernandes, “I Do Everything I’m Told” / Fernandes’ latest is urgent and disorienting; it wonders long and brushes against the reader with affirmation. All poetry harbors the poet’s voice, but Fernandes’ timbre seems to register in a rare and vital way.
Michael Garrigan, “River, Amen” / This work by Garrigan is gentle and glorious, a series of steps deeper into the forest, closer to the riverbanks, to a safe and affectionate perch from which to see every living thing willing to reveal itself. Few modern poets take up the mantle of nature with as much compassion and curiosity.
Jessica Kantrowitz, “Open Things” / Kantrowitz’s poems—some like folk blessings, others quiet resolutions and revolutions—rearrange words, then atoms, repairing the reader and bringing them closer to their truest self than before they encountered the page.
Ben Lerner, “The Lights” / Lerner’s latest offers a new definition of the word “persistent,” pressing on and into needed dialogues with the self, with loved ones, with the noise of the outside world. But I love the book most when it’s quiet, when it’s surrounded by rain and snow, when it gazes into the pure center of the night sky.
Jenny Molberg, “The Court of No Record” / In a remarkable work of true advocacy, Molberg compares and contrasts the language courts use to describe violence and trauma—and the interior lyricism of actual survivors. This book is difficult and hilarious and so very necessary. Read my interview with the poet here.
Jason Myers, “Maker of Heaven &” / Stunning and soulful, Myers chases the divine spark through these poems, to find it residing in every kind of person whether or not conventional wisdom recognizes their worth. Read my review essay here.
Jose Olivarez, “Promises of Gold” / Through narratives and rhapsodies, Olivarez shines golden light on his Mexican-American community and asks the country around them to lean into and live up to their close harmonies.
Nicole Sealey, “The Ferguson Report” / Sealey accesses emotional truth and corrects the collective record through a work of erasure. The poet sands the titular document to its spiritual and communal essence.
And lest you think I lingered too long in this moment, here are a few favorite poetry reads from this year, transmitted in from years past:
Louise Gluck, “Poems 1962-2012”
Maya Popa, “Wound is the Origin of Wonder’
Mary Ruefle, “My Private Property”
Chales Simic, “The Voice at 3:00 A.M.”
Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass”
Next up: Part 3, fiction