What is Amazing by Heather Christle
There are so many things in this book! The ocean! Dr. Pepper! Spiders! Plus you get exclamation points! I love it!
Bestiary by Donika Kelly
Kelly’s book shows readers how to fashion the self, to mythologize the self, how to appreciate and nurture our creature-ness. Because this is how we love ourselves and how we heal from trauma.
Headwaters by Ellen Bryant Voigt
The radiance of these poems astounds and confounds: how can language be both wild and precise? My brain sparked like a matchhead when I read this book.
Something Bright, Then Holes by Maggie Nelson
Heartbreak, the Gowanus canal, caretaking, herons–in the way she does, Nelson’s images work to undo binaries about beauty, illness, love. You feel like she’s talking to you.
Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
When I think about how we can be of service to one another as writers, I think of this book. Vuong serves through his work, and its light is a torch for readers.
Lindsay Illich is the author of Fingerspell (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), Rile & Heave (Texas Review Press, 2017) and Heteroglossia (Anchor & Plume, 2016). Rile & Heave won the Texas Review Press Breakthrough Prize in Poetry. She teaches at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts.