Rookery – Traci Brimhall
I am in love with the precision of Brimhall’s language and the way these poems explore the lines between danger and desire, vulnerability and human connection, love and mortality. What a lovely first book this is.
Whereas – Layl Long Soldier
Oh, this book. It’s so challenging in both form and content, and so smart, and so important. Even as it grapples with politics and history and the violence American white people have inflicted on native tribes, it also has an underlying intimacy, a personal story that informs these poems.
The Stranger Manual – Catie Rosemurgy
This book has influenced my own writing as much as perhaps any I’ve ever read. It’s funny, wise, irreverent, and a terrific lesson in using persona to explore the self.
Fort Red Border – Kiki Petrosino
This collection of clever, imaginative and often weird love poems has also been super influential on my writing. The title is an anagram for Robert Redford, and the book explores the many ways love rearranges us.
Mezzanines – Matthew Olzmann
Olzmann is a poet who looks at the world, with all its idiosyncrasies and flaws, its quirks and tragedies, and finds beauty and tenderness in every corner. This book is full of wit and heart.
Amorak Huey is author of three books of poetry, most recently Boom Box (Sundress, 2019), as well as two chapbooks. He is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and teaches at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. amorakhuey@comcast.net