I did not get along well with the poetry long list put out this year by the National Book Award judges. I didn't finish six of the ten. Four of the six were at least in part because of my sensitivity to the subject matter. I've learned that I currently have little to no tolerance for tragedy or the confessional mode at present. Two of the books I thought should not be categorized as poetry. Clearly the judges have more flexible attitudes toward where works fall on the poetry-not poetry spectrum than I do. I ended up wondering if part of the goal of the judges was to pick what they felt Americans should read as a matter of cultural awareness and self-reflection since five, possibly even six, of these books deal with marginalization and victimization. Unfortunately these are still very relevant topics both nationally and globally. However, I'm currently feeling tragedy fatigue and am not willing to read books on those topics, especially if I've read about them before and the language used isn't engaging enough to move me forward despite a distaste for the subject.
So here is a set of lists: their long list, their short list of finalists, a list of the ones I didn't finish, and the short list I would have made if it was up to me. After the lists, I have remarks about each book.
Here is their list:
Anne Carson, Wrong NormaFady Joudah, […]
Dorianne Laux, Life on Earth
Gregory Pardlo, Spectral Evidence
Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Silver
Octavio Quintanilla, The Book of Wounded Sparrows
m.s. RedCherries, mother
Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Something About Living
Elizabeth Willis, Liontaming in America
Actual NBA finalists
Wrong Norma by Anne Carson
[...] Fady Joudah
Mother by m.s. RedCherries
Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
My DNFs (did not finish)
Wrong Norma by Anne Carson
[...] Fady Joudah
The Book of Wounded Sparrows by Octavio Quintanilla
mother by m.s. RedCherries
Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Liontaming in America by Elizabeth Willis
If I were to pick 5 finalists, which 5 would I have chosen?
Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
Spectral Evidence by Gregory Pardo
Silver by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Life on Earth by Dorianne Laux
[...] by Fady Joudah (though I didn’t finish it)
New Directions Publishing
Probably the biggest reason I abandoned this about half way through was that I didn’t feel like I was reading poetry. I felt like I was reading flash fiction narratives. On top of that, I felt there were classical allusions were being dropped that were beyond me. I did appreciate some of the humor (what I perceived as humor).
Dorianne Laux, Life on Earth
Norton / W. W. Norton & Company
I chose this book after Carson’s because I expected it to be about real life experiences and I wasn’t disappointed in this. It was a nice grounded reading experience after Wrong Norma. In Life on Earth, Laux is locating herself in her middle old age by discussing both the experience of aging, such as down-sizing her home, and of looking back over her life at memories of childhood and throughout her adulthood. Though tough, uncomfortable aspects of life are shown, this is essentially an optimistic and life-loving book. This would make a good summer read poetry book. Not in the way that we think of light fiction for summer reading but rather that this book seems centered in summer. Fall and winter are familiar and acknowledged but the optimism and fullness of summer, of a life well-lived, characterizes this book. Dorianne Laux is like a fragrant hot bath. There are aches and pains within it if you’re of a certain age and/or infirmity but it’s soothing and affirms that life is good and aches and pains can be eased.
**Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry
Graywolf Press
Seuss is a master of metaphor, simile and cynicism. Like Laux’s Life on Earth, these poems look at the present and the past but Seuss lacks Laux’s optimism despite pain. Seuss tends to take pain as a gritty given worth skewering with a metaphor or five. Suess’s book leans toward the confessional vein of poetry (while also showing some skepticism of it). In places she explores the line between personal responsibility and those things both personal and cultural that we inherit and then wrestle with or succumb to. If you like poetry in which a person examines how they got where they are and questions much of it along the way, including poetic axioms, Suess’s book is worth reading. It’s also worth reading for her gift of turns of phrase and quirky but apt comparisons in the quest to communicate the nuances of experience.
Warning: If you read Diane Seuss, you may begin seeing metaphors while driving. I’m not aware of any corrective lenses for this phenomenon.
Gregory Pardlo, Spectral Evidence
Knopf / Penguin Random House
I gave this 5 stars on Goodreads for an ambitious plan well executed. Pardlo explains the big project, which, in simple terms, is to explore racism and sexism and their intersection across time, personally and socially--through sets of discrete poems. To decide whether you're interested in this book, it's worthwhile reading the explanatory introduction and the references cited in the back of the book. If those two things interest you, read the whole thing.
The poems in the book look at incidents the poet was not directly involved in--deep into history--and incidents from his own life. There's an awareness of continuing to actively live through these issues and feeling the potential to put a dent in them while acknowledging how deep rooted they are. It's essentially looking at two forms of othering. He does a great job of selecting out language from historical texts that shows how absurd and illogical the rules or standards put in place to justify othering have been. Is it a perfect book? No. But I can easily see why it was on the National Book Award for poetry long list and it's worth reading if you think it behooves you to keep a spotlight on these issues. It would be great for discussion in a book club, whether a poetry book club or any other kind.
Fady Joudah, […] DNF
Milkweed Editions
Octavio Quintanilla, The Book of Wounded Sparrows DNF
Texas Review Press
m.s. RedCherries, mother DNF
Penguin Books / Penguin Random House
*Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Something About Living DNF
University of Akron Press 16.95
This one is again about Palestine/Gaza. I can see why this one won over [...] by Joudah. Tuffaha uses poetic techniques in terms of space on the page and textual changes. Her poems also seem to interweave narratives/perspectives more than Joudah's. However, if I had to choose between these two, I would have chosen Joudah's book. His language was much more interesting and he had some very evocative lines. With his book I regretted not wanting to read about the subject matter. With this book, I did not.
Elizabeth Willis, Liontaming in America DNF
New Directions Publishing
If you’re interested in an essay about the isolation of starting anew (think pioneering and exploration), read this book, your interest will be satisfied with something interesting that looks at this phenomenon in varied ways. But I saw very little poetry in it. It’s very expository. To me it’s creative nonfiction or a slightly creative essay. The language is not creative. The format is not creative. Even the narrative aspects of it are explaining the narrative more than providing the narrative. If I were to give this an award it would be in cultural criticism from a historical perspective. That's based on how far I got in the book. It may have made a turn toward religion, especially Mormonism, later. I would say it’s leaning toward conceptually complex but good essays are conceptually complex. Being conceptually complex is not solely, or even particularly the purview of poetry. Not at all. I’m curious to know why the author and/or publisher decided to categorize this as poetry.
Wrong Norma by Anne Carson
[...] Fady Joudah
Mother by m.s. RedCherries
Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
My DNFs (did not finish)
Wrong Norma by Anne Carson
[...] Fady Joudah
The Book of Wounded Sparrows by Octavio Quintanilla
mother by m.s. RedCherries
Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Liontaming in America by Elizabeth Willis
If I were to pick 5 finalists, which 5 would I have chosen?
Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
Spectral Evidence by Gregory Pardo
Silver by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Life on Earth by Dorianne Laux
[...] by Fady Joudah (though I didn’t finish it)
My thoughts on them are presented below in the order I read them. *=The award winner chosen by the National Book Award judges. **=My favorite book of the ten.
Anne Carson, Wrong Norma DNFNew Directions Publishing
Probably the biggest reason I abandoned this about half way through was that I didn’t feel like I was reading poetry. I felt like I was reading flash fiction narratives. On top of that, I felt there were classical allusions were being dropped that were beyond me. I did appreciate some of the humor (what I perceived as humor).
Dorianne Laux, Life on Earth
Norton / W. W. Norton & Company
I chose this book after Carson’s because I expected it to be about real life experiences and I wasn’t disappointed in this. It was a nice grounded reading experience after Wrong Norma. In Life on Earth, Laux is locating herself in her middle old age by discussing both the experience of aging, such as down-sizing her home, and of looking back over her life at memories of childhood and throughout her adulthood. Though tough, uncomfortable aspects of life are shown, this is essentially an optimistic and life-loving book. This would make a good summer read poetry book. Not in the way that we think of light fiction for summer reading but rather that this book seems centered in summer. Fall and winter are familiar and acknowledged but the optimism and fullness of summer, of a life well-lived, characterizes this book. Dorianne Laux is like a fragrant hot bath. There are aches and pains within it if you’re of a certain age and/or infirmity but it’s soothing and affirms that life is good and aches and pains can be eased.
Graywolf Press
Seuss is a master of metaphor, simile and cynicism. Like Laux’s Life on Earth, these poems look at the present and the past but Seuss lacks Laux’s optimism despite pain. Seuss tends to take pain as a gritty given worth skewering with a metaphor or five. Suess’s book leans toward the confessional vein of poetry (while also showing some skepticism of it). In places she explores the line between personal responsibility and those things both personal and cultural that we inherit and then wrestle with or succumb to. If you like poetry in which a person examines how they got where they are and questions much of it along the way, including poetic axioms, Suess’s book is worth reading. It’s also worth reading for her gift of turns of phrase and quirky but apt comparisons in the quest to communicate the nuances of experience.
Warning: If you read Diane Seuss, you may begin seeing metaphors while driving. I’m not aware of any corrective lenses for this phenomenon.
Knopf / Penguin Random House
I gave this 5 stars on Goodreads for an ambitious plan well executed. Pardlo explains the big project, which, in simple terms, is to explore racism and sexism and their intersection across time, personally and socially--through sets of discrete poems. To decide whether you're interested in this book, it's worthwhile reading the explanatory introduction and the references cited in the back of the book. If those two things interest you, read the whole thing.
The poems in the book look at incidents the poet was not directly involved in--deep into history--and incidents from his own life. There's an awareness of continuing to actively live through these issues and feeling the potential to put a dent in them while acknowledging how deep rooted they are. It's essentially looking at two forms of othering. He does a great job of selecting out language from historical texts that shows how absurd and illogical the rules or standards put in place to justify othering have been. Is it a perfect book? No. But I can easily see why it was on the National Book Award for poetry long list and it's worth reading if you think it behooves you to keep a spotlight on these issues. It would be great for discussion in a book club, whether a poetry book club or any other kind.
Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Silver
Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers It's my first time reading this poet. This is one of those poetry books that's for those in the know about poetry so I don't know how much it would be enjoyed by someone not in the know. I'd say I'm about 50% in the know about the classical and literary allusions he's making to his poet predecessors. He hides nothing in the table of contents itself, which includes titles such as Paradise Lost, Romanticism, Biographia Literaria, Prelude, Key West, Ars Poetica. Okay, so from the getgo I've clearly run smack into a poetry book full of poems about other poems or the writing of poems. This is usually a groanable state of affairs for me. I prefer poems that talk about the world outside of poetry. However, I have to admit, I really enjoyed this book, especially the way he talks back to Wordsworth and the Romantics. Does it make me want to run out and buy more of his books? No, but I enjoyed hearing him grapple with the tension between earlier poets, especially their focus on nature, and the world he lives in. He does so with an admirable balance of appreciation and pushback.
Milkweed Editions
I am not a fan of the title but I get it. Many of the poems have the same [...] title. Immediately upon reading I understood that the ellipsis was intended to indicate an ongoing situation and was less bothered by it. I'm not going to fault Joudah’s poetry. The poems I read had some striking lines in them. My main issue is that I'm not up to reading another book with this subject matter at this time. Joudah is a Palestinian-American (and a doctor for those who like to read doctor poets) and it is the tragic Palestinian situation he is writing about. One of the early poems in the book is about the death of children. It's one of the best poems I've read of this kind. But do I want to read more? No.
Texas Review Press
If you want to understand how the separation of immigrant children from their parents affect them, this is the book for you. You also might enjoy it if you like a book that includes images by the poet. In this book, you also get poetry that varies in the way it makes use of the space on the page. As with Joudah’s book, what was a killer for me was the subject matter. I don’t need anyone to convince me of the damage that causes. I taught English as a Second Language to teens and adults for years and have heard of all sorts of border crossing trauma. So the poet is going to have to convince me that I want to read about this subject and he doesn’t. The first half focuses on his mother. I found it a kind of confessional poetry that didn’t appeal to me–stronger on the pathos than on poetic technique. The second section seems to focus on his father. Every now and then his talent as a poet shone through but I didn’t feel engaged enough to continue. Some of his art I liked and some did nothing for me. I didn’t find that the paintings added to the book particularly. They’re not integrated into the poetry but rather they’re in separate sections.
Penguin Books / Penguin Random House
RedCherries is Northern Cheyenne and this book is about the Native American experience. She makes a point of declaring at the front of the book that this is a book of characters rather than her own personal experience. None of this initially turned me off. In fact it made me optimistic and curious. But as I started to read it, it seemed like a lot of stuff I've read before. The "story," which is vague, didn't engage me. The only thing I found different from other Native lit I've read is that it is treating the 1970s as historical and there's a lot of roving in it. This is a hybrid book that goes back and forth from prose to poetry and is more prosy than poetic. It's one of those things where I've read better elsewhere on the same themes. I could see this being a worthwhile book in a Native American Lit class, but I'm not in one so I'm moving on.
University of Akron Press 16.95
This one is again about Palestine/Gaza. I can see why this one won over [...] by Joudah. Tuffaha uses poetic techniques in terms of space on the page and textual changes. Her poems also seem to interweave narratives/perspectives more than Joudah's. However, if I had to choose between these two, I would have chosen Joudah's book. His language was much more interesting and he had some very evocative lines. With his book I regretted not wanting to read about the subject matter. With this book, I did not.
Elizabeth Willis, Liontaming in America DNF
New Directions Publishing
If you’re interested in an essay about the isolation of starting anew (think pioneering and exploration), read this book, your interest will be satisfied with something interesting that looks at this phenomenon in varied ways. But I saw very little poetry in it. It’s very expository. To me it’s creative nonfiction or a slightly creative essay. The language is not creative. The format is not creative. Even the narrative aspects of it are explaining the narrative more than providing the narrative. If I were to give this an award it would be in cultural criticism from a historical perspective. That's based on how far I got in the book. It may have made a turn toward religion, especially Mormonism, later. I would say it’s leaning toward conceptually complex but good essays are conceptually complex. Being conceptually complex is not solely, or even particularly the purview of poetry. Not at all. I’m curious to know why the author and/or publisher decided to categorize this as poetry.
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