Of the collections of poetry relished in 2023 and earlier this winter, I very much enjoyed Luke Stromberg’s debut, THE ELEPHANT’S MOUTH (Kelsey Books), Mag Gabbert’s full-length debut, SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS (Mad Creek Books), Diana Whitney’s second book, DARK BEDS (June Road Press), and Tony Hoagland’s posthumous collection, still humorous yet poignant and piercing, TURN UP THE OCEAN (Graywolf).
I also revisited and found still compelling Philip Schultz’s FAILURE, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Stephen Dunn’s LOOSESTRIFE, and Li Young-Lee’s ROSE, among many others worth savoring, in 2023.
David Hinton is a translator of Chinese poetry whom I have been happy to discover. I just finished a selection of Tu Fu translated by Hinton. I am now reading Hinton’s translation of Chinese poet T’ao Ch’ien, AD 365- AD 427, and titled, The Selected Poems of T’ao Ch’ien (Copper Canyon). Wonderful.
For more on Hoagland, I reviewed TURN UP THE OCEAN at the Loch Raven Review, linked here.
I also reviewed Mag Gabbert’s SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS at the Heavy Feather Review linked here.
What’s next? Well, I am reading through Robert Bly’s anthology, NEWS OF THE UNIVERSE: poems of twofold consciousness (Sierra Club Books 1980), which I came across in a sort of casual and random fashion, and . . . .
Cheers,
G. H. Mosson