What other poetry books have you been reading lately?
I recently (re)read Asiya Wadud’s books—I especially love Syncope (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019) and No Knowledge is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body (Nightboat Books, 2021). Syncope is a long, documentary poem about migrants on the “Left-to-Die” boat in the Mediterranean, and I loved its choral qualities, repetition, and use of numbers and counting that reminded me of a long, drawn out—really a drowning in—Langston Hughes’ “Johannesburg Mines” where the number is what gets you. The title of No Knowledge has been rattling in my brain for what feels like an eternity. See especially her essay there (and here) “Straight Lines, Knots, Quarter Turns – Repeat.”
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