What other poetry books have you been reading lately?
This summer I’ve been enraptured by several collections—most notably The Carrying by Ada Limón, The Rabbits Could Sing by Amber Flora Thomas, and Equilibrium by Tiana Clark. Both Thomas and Clark have new collections coming out in September, and I love to delve back into a poet’s last book or earlier work to ready myself for their latest. I’m truly ecstatic about Red Channel in the Rupture and I Can’t Talk about the Trees without the Blood; I’ve had them pre-ordered for months, and I check the mail everyday praying for an early miracle. As for Limón’s The Carrying, it has truly shaken me to the core. I admire her keen eye for environment and how it emerges through bees and dandelions, in caves and trees. Her candor in these poems though—the way she meditates on grief and forgiveness, but also joy—crafts the kind of connection between the poet and the reader I love most. Her poems are complex in their imagery and echoes, but they also have a skilled accessibility to them that allows them to pinch a nerve or steal a breath and only make me trust her more as a writer. I never feel led astray; every meandering is beautiful and purposeful and makes me grateful these words are in the world. I’m horrified of caves and being underground, but “Notes on the Below” inspires me to follow her through Mammoth Cave National Park, as long as I get a flashlight or something. I’m scared of the dark, too. I suppose her work helps me confront my own fears then, not only as a writer, but as a human sharing this world with so much life.
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