Bad Boats – Laura Jensen
Jensen’s work makes my head feel like a helium balloon, but in a good way. She creates a space with language unlike any other I’ve entered.
Citizen – Claudia Rankine
Mindblowingly powerful, incredibly important work revolutionary in form and content. This should be required reading.
Glass, Irony & God – Anne Carson
My poetry professor suggested that I read this my first year of college. It changed my life.
Green Notebook, Winter Road – Jane Cooper
If there’s such a thing as a comfort food version of poetry, this is mine. I find myself returning to it whenever I feel lost.
V: WaveSon.nets/Losing L’una
This books (and website!) completely changed the game for me and led me to completely reformulate the way I think about poetry.
Emma Bolden is the author of House Is an Enigma (Southeast Missouri State University Press), medi(t)ations (Noctuary), and Maleficae (GenPop). The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, her work has appeared in The Norton Introduction to Literature, The Best American Poetry, and such journals as the Mississippi Review, The Rumpus, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, New Madrid, TriQuarterly, Shenandoah, and the Greensboro Review. She serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief for Tupelo Quarterly.