Must-Read Poetry: November 2020

Here are six notable books of poetry publishing this month.

Together in a Sudden Strangeness edited by Alice Quinn 

“I don’t want to find meaning in it,” , writes in “Pandemicon.” She’s not surprised “how America can brand even a pandemic, turn it / into .” After all, we’re in “a reality series with viral bread recipes / and optimism,” and perhaps only absurdity can capture the heart of our moment. Quinn has accomplished something dizzying here: arranged a stellar cast of poets, some with Seuss’s satirical eye, others with a fresh deep down sentiment. It is what all great anthologies must be: comprehensive, contradictory, stirring. A prose poetic sequence by includes gems: “During the pandemic, I knew each neighbor by one thing. The neighbors above, the baby. The neighbors below, the dog…I wondered what one thing the neighbors would know me by. What truth an inadvertence could betray.” proclaims: “I don’t know whose side you’re on, / But I am here for the people / Who work in grocery stores that glow in the morning / And close down for deep, always sharp in her song, offers a “Plague Diary”: “Today, I walked the worn / shadows to the pond and congratulated myself / on my attention, my ears turned to the blackbirds, // my eyes catching the hawk. Today, my heart, silly little / star cup, measured the odd inches of the crocus.” We can only hope to live the dream lyric offered by : “Slowly the fog did what fog does, eventually: it lifted.” It is sad that one of the best books of poetry of the year is about our shared pain, but maybe that is the catharsis we need.