FAVORITE 2021 READS
I complained to my friend and poetry workshop colleague, Laura Weldon that her blog's favorite- books- of- the- year list did not include any poetry. She pointed out that she had just produced a list of poetry matched with suggestions of gifts to go with them, and then she suggested that I might post a list of my favorite books of poetry from the past year. However, I really don't like the ghetto-ization of poetry that's going on in every year's round-up I see. The New York Times, which rarely includes poetry in any genre-inclusive list, this week recognizes that Amanda Gorman's latest book of poems Call Us What We Carry is number one on the best-seller list BY POSTING IT AS FICTION!! And The Times "Best OF Poetry list" is always set off alone, away from the prose lists as if it might infect them.
So of the 90 or so books I read last year, here are my favorite 15 read in 2021, but all published before then. I am always behind.
Beatty , Jan – American Bastard is one of the two best memoir's I've read this year, both by poets. Jan's is the story of her journey to find her birth mother. And it is brave, tough, and outside the usual sweet adoption story so less told and more truthful than the usual too.
Bialosky, Jill - Asylum seems to me the book of poetry that most got lost in the pandemic because it came out in August 2020. And it's not an easy, quick read. But this narrative series of poems that involve the poet's life, Dante, and images of trees, snow, pollen, domesticity held me the way a mandala does-- or that cross-section of tree rings on the cover.
Cather, Willa – Alexander’s Bridge was one of many Cather novels I have been wending my way through this year on a cross-country trip that included three days in her hometown of Red Cloud, Nebraska. None of them has ever moved me as My Antonia did; all of them moved as much or more as contemporary fiction. This one astounded me when I realized it was her first, her first novel. My god.
Clark, Heather – The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath - In response to my first posting on this biography, George Bilgere wrote, "Do we really need another biography of Sylvia Plath?" And having read it, I would say, "Yes, George. We do." First, because it is better written than any other biography I read this year. Second because there is more information on Plath's final days that argue against the myth established by Ted Hughes (in his rearrangement of her book of poems) that her death was inevitable. I will say the bio doesn't make her any more likeable. But it does help to establish her genius, too.
Forché, Carolyn - In the Lateness of the World For while, I wasn't able to like Forche's poetry as I once had with her The Country Between Us, but I am back on her fan list with this one, which opens with a gorgeous list poem ("Museum of Stone" and all its rock words) and a lot of vibrating emotion surrounding important events--political, life-threatening, fatal-- laved with such a vocabulary, such great use of words.
Gissing George – The Odd Women has been on my list since Gail Godwin mentioned it in her novel, The Odd Woman, which I read in (yikes) 1974. And I listened to it in audio, which I loved doing with 19th century novels. This book is so ahead of its time in its theme of the lives of women who remain single and the force of women in a society that is trying to keep them from being a force. It so shocked me with its timeliness that I went on to read Gissing's The New Grub Street which is so descriptive of contemporary publishing as its 19th centuty millieu. This author was amazing.
facts about the poet and her times-- let's face it, we never knew much about Rich. And reading the two bios around the same time provided me with an interesting contrast in gender and class, especially the class differences. Plath always had to be the grateful scholarship girl. Rich did not. She always had to be the grateful female token, which came to enrage her.
Jackson, Lawrence P. – Chester B. Hines: A Biography I taught a course I called Ohio Literature for nearly two decades, Himes has always been on my list to read, and this biography may finally push me to read his fiction. How is this for a prophetic quote from him "The U.S. [will be capable] of electing a black president...when Americans under twenty assume control of all aspects of American life (1966)."
Lepore, Jill – The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin & These Truths: A History of the U.S. Okay, as with Gissing, I am assigning two to Jill Lepore. I was smitten by her life of Benjamin Franklin's sister, which she has pieced together at length and depth from fragments really. My note on These Truths is "This is the best book of American history I have ever read."
McHugh, Heather – Muddy Matterhorn My husband and I have been handing this book of McHugh's poetry back and forth for a year and a half. It is so alive with language (and humor and insight) that I had to quit reading it at night because it set my brain's synapses firing for hours. It is that exciting.
Price, Reynolds - Kate Vaiden This was in my sister Daun's top three favorite novels, but she liked Southern lit a lot more than me, so I put it off. Why now, nearly 20 years after her death, I finally read it, I don't know, but oh wow. It is just beautiful at every level: plot, character, dialogue, sentence, word. I loved it.
mostly famous poets included, but damn, these covid poems were good, right from the first poem by Julia Alvarez, "How will this Pandemic Affect Poetry," which begins: "Will the lines be six feet apart?/ Will these hexameters be heroic like Homer’s?/(Will) (each) (word) (have) (to) (be) (masked) (?)"
Rekdal, Paisley – Appropriate: A Provocation'S exploration of appropriation in literature gave me a lot to think about. I don't always agree with Rekdal's assessments, but wow, she gave me a lot to think about.
Russo, Richard- Empire Falls is, okay, one you all read a long time ago. I found myself at wit's end not being able to find any fiction both funny and meaningful and well-written, but Russo always fills that bill for me. It was a hoot.
Tretheway, Natasha – Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir I have always loved everything Tretheway has written, but she's always written poetry. She is like Jan Beatty in that way, and also in the way that she had a great story to tell, a poet's ability to research, to keep notes, to layer them. And then, she READ it on audio. All done so very well.
Wheeler, Lesley – The State She’s In came out in 2020, and charts the horrid years of the Trump administration and what it meant to a Northerner living in the South, being a mother, a teacher, a daughter. It is strewn with pink cat ear hats, the pawpaw tree, sinister bags of white rice thrown on the poet's lawn, and Confederate statues. Reading Wheeler's poetry, as with McHugh's always leave me feeling like I am in the presence of poetic genius.
Young, Kevin - African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, the second poetry anthology on my list, has kept me busy all year. I would read one poem, or one poet a day, first thing in the morning. The brief bios were often as instructive as the poetry was moving. Arranged chronologically, the book's earliest sections just galvanized me. More of Phyllis Wheatley, and her life, than I ever knew, and Dave the Potter, who placed tiny poems on the pots he threw hundreds of years ago.
