Must-Read Poetry: August 2017
August is an especially strong month for debuts, and includes the collected poems of an essential American voice. Here are seven notable books of poetry publishing in August.
Depression & Other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim
Benaim’s debut is charged and honest, but the reader is eased into this journey through a direct invitation voiced on the first pages. True to the title, this is a book about depression, and about the occasional magic tricks that spur us against anxiety. “explaining my depression to my mother ” is masterful, the type of poem I wish could reach so many teenage ears. “mom, / my depression is a shape shifter”—the narrator struggles to distill her world, but her mother’s interrogations are skeptical and curt. Benaim captures the complexity of depression, how “insomnia sweeps me up into its arms, / dips me in the kitchen by the small glow of stove light.” She tries going on walks at night, but her “stuttering kneecaps clank like silver spoons” and “ring in my ears like clumsy church bells, / reminding me i am sleepwalking on an ocean of happiness / i cannot baptize myself in.” So
