Must-Read Poetry: August 2019

Here are six notable books of poetry publishing in August.

Or What We’ll Call Desire by Alexandra Teague

“Because without words what are we // but ourselves—inarticulate as the sky.” Teague’s poems, so often first anchored in singular moments, evolve into mazes of time and space, as with “The Giant Artichoke.” The narrator, thinking of herself as a child, remembers her mother reading highway billboards, her words filling the space left wide by grief. “I learned love,” the narrator says, “as rituals of hunger, a nest of thistles / around the heart.” Later, “Matryoshka (as Madness),” a poem perfectly suited for its columnar form, begins with conjecture: “If you could start / at the center: nest / a solid self inside / a safer self / like a house / so no one sees / all the ways you’ve / twisted open, copied / yourself.” Her narrow lines feel more insular than claustrophobic; walls in which the narrator must reflect herself. She is