HE feeling of green. Shapeshifters. Pina Bausch. These are among the sources of inspiration the poets in our eighteenth annual feature shared regarding their yearslong journeys toward the publication of their debut collections. Each of the following ten books offers a new lexicon for us to explore the human experience, where language is transforms poetry into coding, data, a mathematical function, part of software; Courtney Faye Taylor’s utilizes collage, photographs, and found text to hold polyphonic states of feeling and thinking; and No‘u Revilla gifts us vertical language with words falling down the page like droplets of rain and growing up like saplings in . In , Rachel Mannheimer writes an ekphrastic book-length poem with tonal aplomb; in , Chia-Lun Chang tackles the immigrant experience with ferocity and vulnerability; and Nicholas Goodly’s pours forth lyric poems both magical and muscular.
