Afterland: Poems

2017 has been another year of transition for me. After living in Madison, Wisc., for only a year, I moved out to California. It’s been strange and a little unsettling to move farther and farther away from my family and friends in New York. I’ve also felt anxious because teaching duties in Madison and Iowa City, a fairly demanding new job I’ve taken on to pay the bills, and edits for my forthcoming debut story collection have kept me from writing any new fiction. And then, of course, there’s been the nightmarish daily assault of Donald Trump, white supremacy, toxic masculinity, gun violence... The list goes on. Thank goodness for independent bookstores! A Room of One’s Own, Skylight Books, Eso Won Books, and The Last Bookstore helped new cities feel more like home. Greenlight Bookstore and Prairie Lights Books have been priority stops whenever I dipped back to Brooklyn or Iowa City. Thank goodness for books. Here are some that have ushered me through a challenging year: A People on the Cover by Glenn Ligon The Mountain by Paul Yoon Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe Exit West by Mohsin Hamid The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison A Life of Adventure and Delight by Akhil Sharma Simulacra by Airea D. Matthews The King Is Always Above the People by Daniel Alarcón The Education of Margot Sanchez by Lilliam Rivera WHEREAS by Layli Long Soldier Portrait of the Alcoholic by Kaveh Akbar New People by Danzy Senna Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li Ordinary Beast by Nicole Sealey Somebody with a Little Hammer by Mary Gaitskill House of Lords and Commons by Ishion Hutchinson The Changeling by Victor LaValle What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons Afterland by Mai Der Vang What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing by Margot Livesey Idaho by Emily Ruskovich Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke Bestiary by Donika Kelly Like a Beggar by Ellen Bass Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado Play Dead by francine j. harris Insurrections by Rion Amilcar Scott More from A Year in Reading 2017 Do you love Year in Reading and the amazing books and arts content that The Millions produces year round? We are asking readers for support to ensure that The Millions can stay vibrant for years to come. Please click here to learn about several simple ways you can support The Millions now. Don't miss: A Year in Reading 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 [millions_ad]

It’s been a long 2017. So much of being a poet as I understand it is about maintaining a permeability to wonder, and that’s been difficult work in a year spent in the long shadow of a fascistic regime, a year in which the earth has grown increasingly desperate in its attempts to warn us about the damage we’re doing to it. The (perhaps feeble ((but noble))) balm—a year of books, richer than any I can recall. It’s like the world of poetry knew we’d need it to rise up and carry us, to orient us toward our livable tomorrows. Poets are watchers, wonderers. And they have the magical ability to make us realer than we can make ourselves. Elizabeth Alexander writes: “We are of interest to one another, are we not?” I like thinking of poems as little empathy tablets, granting us access to (and compassion for) lived experiences unlike any we’ll ever know firsthand. Here are some new books (mostly poetry, listed in no particular order) from the past year that have helped me wander and wonder from one day into the next: Frank Bidart – Half-Light Anaïs Duplan – Mount Carmel & the Blood of Parnassus Marwa Helal – I Am Made to Leave I Am Made to Return Traci Brimhall – Saudade Layli Long Soldier - Whereas Rachel McKibbens - blud Sahar Muradi – [Gates] Steph Burt – Advice from the Lights Maggie Smith – Good Bones Cait Weiss Orcutt - Valleyspeak Nuar Alsadir – Fourth Person Singular Nicole Tong – How to Prove a Theory Craig Morgan Teicher – The Trembling Answers Nicole Sealey – Ordinary Beast Danez Smith – Don’t Call Us Dead sam sax - Madness Javier Zamora - Unaccompanied Marcus Wicker – Silencer Alex Dimitrov – Together and By Ourselves Ruth Awad – Set to Music a Wildfire Bill Knott – Selected Poems William Brewer – I Know Your Kind Morgan Parker – There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé Carl Phillips – Wild Is the Wind Marie Howe - Magdalene Ghayath Almadhoun - Adrenalin Patricia Smith – Incendiary Arts Tyree Daye – River Hymns Gabrielle Calvocoressi – Rocket Fantastic Mai Der Vang - Afterland Sarah Browning – Killing Summer Alessandra Lynch – Daylily Called it a Dangerous Moment Chen Chen – When I Grow Up I Want to Be A List of Further Possibilities Adrian Matejka – Map to the Stars Finn Menzies – Brilliant Odyssey Don’t Yearn Eve L. Ewing – Electric Arches Shane McCrae – In the Language of My Captor Ghassan Zaqtan (trans. by Fady Joudah) – The Silence that Remains Franny Choi – Death By Sex Machine Laura Kasischke – Where Now: New and Selected Poems Subject to Change: Trans Poetry & Conversation Megan Stielstra – The Wrong Way to Save Your Life Hanif Abdurraqib – They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us Melissa Febos – Abandon Me Ta-Nehisi Coates – We Were Eight Years in Power Alissa Nutting – Made for Love Roxane Gay – Hunger Kevin Young - Bunk Wendy Xu - Phrasis More from A Year in Reading 2017 Do you love Year in Reading and the amazing books and arts content that The Millions produces year round? We are asking readers for support to ensure that The Millions can stay vibrant for years to come. Please click here to learn about several simple ways you can support The Millions now. Don't miss: A Year in Reading 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 [millions_ad]