I purchased all of them, some digital, some hard copies, and at the very least sampled 30 pages of each. Of the ten, I didn't finish (DNF) four of them, which is not a bad ratio. Below are my comments on each of the books. At the end is the five NBCCA finalists and what would be my five finalists.
An Authentic Life by Jennifer Chang (Copper Canyon)
I enjoyed reading this book of poetry but I wouldn’t say it wowed me. My favorite poems were the ones about being a mother. I’m not a mother so I don’t have a particular bias toward that subject matter. I just felt those were Chang’s best. She writes in free verse that sometimes employs long lines and sometimes short lines. Though much of the poems are left aligned, some of them escape the left margin and roam the white space. She frequently dispenses with punctuation and sometimes her enjambments can be jarring. Some of her poems refer to Plato so if you’ve read him recently there may be subtleties you’ll catch that I missed. She has three “Dialogues” poems and one on the death of Socrates. But there’s also a poem about life during the pandemic and one about surviving suicide, so this is not a book focused on a particular theme. It struck me as a book of a competent poet still finding her footing and the ground she wants to walk.
Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen (Tin House) DNF
In theory, this should be a book I would enjoy because there's quite a bit of science involved, archaeology, anthropology, biology. But I just didn't feel engaged with it. There was nothing especially amiss with the poetics. I wouldn't hesitate to try another book by Allen. It strikes me that if I'd encountered this book 6 months ago, before I'd begun tackling poetry prize long lists, that I'd have gotten through it. As it is, I'm reading it at the tail end of these long lists and a book really has to have something that pulls at me to keep going. This book didn't have enough pull.
Consider the Rooster by Oliver Baez Bendorf (Nightboat) DNF
More than 50% of this struck me as intentionally obscure. I know it's intentional because there are poems that are fairly straight-forward and others with varying degrees of subtlety. I read almost 50% (ebook) of this book and decided to call it quits. I will give it marks for some humor and for addressing gender in some interesting ways (Bendorf is transgender).
A Gaze Hound That Hunteth by the Eye by V. Penelope Pelizzon (University of Pittsburgh)
Pellizon won me over immediately with her dense, inventive use of language. I settled in for an enjoyable ride and was not disappointed. This book tells the story of a woman who didn’t have children but had a wildly varied life in some pretty far flung places. At times it’s like reading a National Geographic photographer’s memoir in poetry or listening to an eccentric aunt recounting her life–never knowing what’s going to bubble up from her memory as you talk to her. Pellizon celebrates her adaptability and richness of experience while also comparing her choices against the norm, recognizing that standing apart from that norm can be isolating.
While I was happy to be dazzled by her language and experiences and charmed by her trusty canine, Chompsky, I was reading this as part of the National Book Critics Circle Award long list and started to wonder “where’s the beef.” It comes as a long 11-part poem “Of Vinegar Of Pearl” that is about her relationship with her cantankerous, independent, gritty mother as that mother wrestles unhappily with old age.
Pellizon is not a passive left-margin poet. She uses the space on the page and line breaks as an active part of her art. The look on the page from poem to poem may stay the same or may be completely different. The visual changes, however, don't use the more radical liberty of modern techniques. Her choices create interest without creating disorientation.
Who is this book for and not for? If you enjoy sonics and unusual word choices, you’ll enjoy Pellizon’s poetry. If you have to stop and look up every word you’re unfamiliar with, you could find her work frustrating. If you like seeing the wide world through the kaleidoscope of poetry and of someone who has inhabited diverse environments, this is for you. If you prefer confessional poetry, this book is not for you. If you like stanza variety that creates visual changes on the page, this book will hold your interest. If you have managed to remain devoted to a prickly parent, you’ll be able to relate to a section of this book. If you’re a person who has chosen a path through life that doesn’t include parenting, this is a window into how one person has framed her choice, especially as she starts to face her old age.
Samples of the poetry found in this volume:
https://ecotonemagazine.org/poetry/elegy-for-estrogen/
https://tinhouse.com/orts-slarts/
https://plumepoetry.com/a-gaze-hound-that-hunteth-by-the-eye/
Instructions for the Lovers by Dawn Lundy Martin (Nightboat) DNF
I've created a new label for this type of poetry: pretentious abstract confessionalism.
The Palace of Forty Pillars by Armen Davoudian (Tin House)
This book of poetry definitely puts Davoudian on my "to watch" list. He's a "younger" poet. He is currently working on a PhD at Stanford. As is true of most younger poets, "coming of age" type subject matter is present, mostly in the first half of the book. I enjoyed some of the formal experimentation in the first 2/3 of the book but the real stand-out is a sequence of 20 sonnets for which the book is named.
This sonnet sequence is conceptually interesting. The Palace of 40 Pillars is so named because the 20 constructed pillars are repeated within the reflecting pool. Davoudian has taken the idea of a crown of sonnets in which the last line of one poem is the first line of the second one and embedded it within the "turn" of each sonnet. He puts a space between the octave and sestet and the last line of the first has an echo (sometimes just one word) in the first line of the second. There is a lot of variation in the sonnets. One isn't 14 lines. Another is an amazing anagram of the word pomegranate. I don't think any of them have a strict rhyme scheme.
This sonnet sequence is worth the price of the book (which I think was $12 when I got it on amazon) if you're a fan of the sonnet and enjoy seeing what poets do with it. While I wouldn't call them like Shakespeare's sonnets, I see Davoudian reaching after The Bard in the word play he employs in his sonnets. It makes me curious to see what he will do next. I believe English is his second or third language and he's doing a great job of absorbing it and seeing the potential in words with double (or more meanings).
Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Is Carl Phillips a competent poet? Yes. But he’s not my guy. I found his 2023 Pulitzer Winner Then the War difficult to get through. That said, I did like this book better than Then the War and I particularly liked the poems in the second half of the book, where he does less equivocating. I’m still not very fond of how he uses the natural world. It’s as though he only uses it for metaphor, feeling no connection to it otherwise. As was true with Then the War, he is almost continuously in relationship in his poems. I began to feel claustrophobic, like I needed to tell this lurking non-specific person (or people) to back off, give Phillips some breathing room. I’m sure that says as much about me as about Phillips or the person/people he’s referring to. We are different people, Phillips and I. I read this book as part of a self-assigned project to read long lists of major poetry prizes. It’s nearly done. I can now give Phillips some breathing room myself.
Sturge Town by Kwame Dawes (W. W. Norton)
Who is this book for? People who enjoy:
- Beautiful language.
- Books reflecting on loss and mortality (by extension probably people in the second half of life).
- Reading about the experiences of people who make up the African diaspora.
- The culture of the Caribbean, especially Jamaica.
Outside of a book club, this is a book that could be read one poem at a time randomly. While there’s a development to the sections, it doesn’t have to be read from cover to cover and some of these poems would be good for savoring or reflecting on. There are many occasions of a recognizable experience well said.
Longing is a strong theme in the first part of the book. Though I mention the African diaspora above, anyone who has lived many places or repeatedly been a stranger or who has wondered what connection would occur when visiting an ancestral land can relate to his poems dealing with our relationship to a land and to history, whether personal ancestral history, cultural history or the history of the earth.
Here are links to some of the poems that appear in this volume. They’re not necessarily my favorites but they will give you a feel for the poetry he has collected in this book.
https://theadroitjournal.org/issue-forty-four/kwame-dawes/
https://yalereview.org/article/kwame-dawes-after-the-biopsy
https://yalereview.org/article/kwame-dawes-on-hearing-news
Who is this book not for? Apparently it’s not for the judges of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Well, that’s not quite fair. They did have it on their 2024 long list. However, it didn’t make it to the finalist list of five, which surprises me. I’ve read three of the five finalists and I would have placed this above all three of those. But poetry tastes are very individual. All I can do is recommend you give this one a try.
Wrong Norma by Anne Carson (New Directions) (already "read"–see Natl Bk Awards post) DNF
Yard Show by Janice N. Harrington (BOA)
Harrington is an African American woman who has lived in Alabama, Nebraska, and Illinois, and she is taking us on a Heritage tour in this book of poetry. She celebrates the grasslands she has known and revisits. She explores the liminal space of yards and porches as modes of expression and assertions of ownership. This book devotes four poems to the poor rural community of Pembroke Township, Illinois, that include snippets of oral history, observations and reflections. Along the way she questions how we perceive poverty. Other poems meditate on clouds and apple peeling but mostly on memory and place. There’s a quiet theme of disruption and questions of belonging and not belonging.
She brings along other thinkers in the form of quotes from Roland Barthes, Carl Phillips, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among many others, both well known and little known, weaving the history of thought through her poetry. This book includes an ample poem-by-poem notes section for reference. Despite having read all of the notes, I feel that there are nuances that I’ve missed on the first read, which is not uncommon in a book of poetry.
Her poems vary from the lyrical to direct observation, from lined poetry to numbered short paragraphs, from left aligned poems to more inventive forms of expression. Though it’s not strictly necessary to read this book from beginning to end, the final poems do feel like they have grown out of the experience of the earlier ones.
I was rather surprised when I came to the end of this book (was reading an ebook) and wished there had been more. In fact, I’d say my only criticism of this book is that it needed to be longer.
NBCCA 5 Finalists:
Wrong Norma (DNF) by Anne Carson
An Authentic Life by Jennifer Chang
Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips
Instructions for the Lovers (DNF) Dawn Lundy Martin
Consider the Rooster (DNF) by Oliver Baez Bendorf
My 5 Finalists (in order of preference):
Sturge Town by Kwame Dawes (this would have been my winner)
A Gaze Hound that Hunteth by the Eye by V. Penelope Pellizon
Yard Show by Janice N. Harrington
The Palace of Forty Pillars by Armen Davoudian
An Authentic Life by Jennifer Chang
On neither finalist list: Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen (DNF)
As of the date of posting this, the winner of the award has not been announced.
Part of the reason I've embarked on the project of reading the long list was to see if my tastes aligned with that of the NBCCA judges. They clearly don't since three of the five they chose as finalists were DNFs for me. Still, I'm glad to have read the five on my "finalist" list. Four of them were new to me. I'd read poems by Kwame Dawes before but never one of his books. This reading project has been an interesting experiment but I don't see myself repeating it. It's too expensive and I found myself rushing through the books I enjoyed to be sure to get through all ten. I prefer to be leisurely in my poetry reading and processing. Even though we don't agree, my hat is off to all of the readers and judges that make this poetry prize possible. These awards are important for keeping poetry alive and in the public eye.
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