New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2024. 112 pages. The poems in Victoria Chang’s With My Back to the World are written in dialogue with the abstract expressionist paintings of Agne…

Minneapolis, Minnesota. Milkweed. 2024. 100 pages. Poetry is so often an art of reflection, but in certain times a poet is called in the moment to respond to the atrocities of the wor…

Sydney. Life Before Man Press. 2023. 340 pages. In a long book that altogether forgoes page numbers, early on readers encounter a set of lines conjuring a mouth (possibly male) tellin…

Woodstock, New York. Mayapple Press. 2024. 66 pages. I’m able to read Sweet Malida outside of my own Judaism and culture and appreciate Zilka Joseph’s meticulous research efforts on t…

Mumbai. Poetrywala. 2023. 196 pages. Indian academic and poet Sukrita Paul Kumar’s recent collection of selected poems, Salt and Pepper, traces the trajectory of the poet’s life from…

New York. Black Spruce Press. 2023. 306 pages. In Seasons at the Patch, Kerry Shawn Keys offers more than 260 poems divided into two sections: “The Patch” and “The Pa…

Paris. Éditions Idem. 2023. 200 pages. Frontières ad libitum is a poetic echo chamber to a program called “Le Printemps des poètes,” an annual event sponsored by the French Ministry o…

Bhubaneswar, India. Ketaki Foundation Trust. 2023. 72 pages. Jayanta Mahapatra was prescient before his passing, last year, at the age of ninety-five: “So it’s here / with all those d…

Bristol, UK. Shearsman Books. 2023. 116 pages. Artists Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka, Henry Taylor; the music of the Pixies and the film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí; Julie Curtiss a…

Fort Lee, New Jersey. CavanKerry Press. 2023. 96 pages.  It is a rare opportunity when a young poet can edit an older poet’s work—inflecting it with his or her own vision. All the mor…

Pittsburgh.University of Pittsburgh Press. 2023. 80 pages. Take Me to Stavanger is a collection of poems by Russian poet Anzhelina Polonskaya, who hails from a small town, Malakhovka,…

New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2023. 320 pages. When the poet Christian Wiman published My Bright Abyss in 2013, the memoir wherein he discusses his illness and his faith, it wa…

Beijing. Tai Hai. 2023. 288 pages. Poet Wang Jibing is one of the representative figures in China’s contemporary new workers’ literature (see WLT, Spring 2021, 28). Initially an ordin…

New York. NYRB Poets. 2023. 184 pages. It is quite possible that with the title Sweet Shop, the Western reader may visualize Amit Chaudhuri luring them into a Western candy shop with…

Burlington, Vermont. Fomite Press. 2023. 168 pages.  In these days of seconds-long sound bites and granular social media posts, the impression one gets reading through Yahia Lababidi’…

Beacon, New York. NYQ Books. 2023. 73 pages. I do not know of a word that encompasses the feelings of grief, anxiety, and utter calmness in one collected idea, but Lauren Camp has cre…

Ringwood, Oklahoma. Turning Plow Press. 2023. 142 pages. Poems that draw on rural scenes and nature are not the flavor of the day. The poems gathered in Come Before Winter, Ken Hada’s…

Minneapolis. Milkweed Editions. 2024. 224 pages. In How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems, poet and writer Mikeas Sánchez explores themes of identity, family, religion, and the natu…

Madison. University of Wisconsin Press. 2023. 106 pages. In his brief translator’s note to Julia Fiedorczuk’s Psalms, Bill Johnston recounts the 2020 interview in which he asked Fiedo…

Minneapolis. Graywolf Press. 2023. 96 pages.  Saltwater Demands a Psalm is the song at a child’s naming ceremony, the elegy at their death, and the soundtrack that marks important par…

Leeds, UK. Peepal Tree. 2023. 149 pages. Kwame Dawes traces both his literal return to Sturge Town, perhaps the most famous of the free towns established for postemancipation Jamaica…

Boston. Beacon Press. 2023. 202 pages. In Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems, Cuban American poet Richard Blanco, like many authors who live on the hyphen, w…

Richmond, Virginia. Diode Editions. 2023. 68 pages. Rosanna Young Oh’s debut collection, The Corrected Version, is multiheaded in its origins and reflections. These poems descend with…

Rugby, UK. Nine Arches Press. 2023. 72 pages. As one goes through this collection of “post-apocalyptic” verses or hyperobject ballads, which are also “eco-themic,” one is seized with…

Gurugram, India. Vintage. 2023. 119 pages. Varavara Rao (b. 1940) is considered the foremost twentieth-century poet of Telugu, spoken by approximately ninety-six million people. A maj…