How to Be Drawn (Poets, Penguin)

Last year my mother died. Often, my habit and love for reading felt unbearable and foreign. Other weeks it was reading alone that comforted me. It was all I wanted to do, all I was capable of doing, because all I wanted was to live inside of sentences, stanzas, stories. I didn't and couldn't go out there, the world was glaring in its surface of sameness, but books were ultimately part of the company that drew me out of a space that was dangerous, expanding in its withdrawal and silence. In 2015, I also had a book of my own published. And, honestly, it was difficult to navigate a space that suddenly felt inarticulate to me. Kind friends and kind strangers alike sent me specific titles regarding grief. I also consumed books where grief, loss, rebirth, and death were implicit, distilled, expanded into unbelievable landscapes I hadn't seen or understood as clearly before, in the surreal afterlife of my mother's absence. One of the best books I read last year and have returned to more than once is Elizabeth Alexander's The Light of the World. The book left me speechless in its love, grace, and dignity. Reading that book gave me hope that I too could survive and celebrate life itself. Alexander's book gave me hope and I picked up Tracy K. Smith's Ordinary Light and Lacy M. Johnson's The Other Side. I also returned to Toi Derricotte's The Undertaker's Daughter. Being on the road on tour for my own book, I often filled my suitcase with more books than clothing. Everything I wore was mostly black so I didn't think or care about clothes at all. But I cared about books and knew there were certain books I needed to have with me should I wake up, inconsolable, in a hotel room on the other side of the country. And so, many books crossed state lines, their spines shifting in mile-high altitudes and time zones. I wrangled slim volumes of poetry into my camera bag, which was stuffed with lenses, notebooks, and a watercolor set. I began thinking of books and geography, literally and psychically. I considered how landscapes affected my mood and how, of course, a voracious grief devoured everything. Sometimes I'd get frustrated because I couldn't remember names of favorites characters or the way those characters in those books had once made me feel, so I'd go back and reread them. And, in my travels, I often looked out for marvelous independent bookstores where I would then pick up more books, often shipping them back to Brooklyn when I realized I'd be charged at the airport for being over the weight restrictions. While working on a photography project in Oxford, Miss., last summer I reread William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Eudora Welty's On Writing. I'd also carried around Lucille Clifton's Collected Poems, edited by Kevin Young, because I was working on photographs about black women's bodies, identities, and the presence and interruption of landscape in terms of blackness. This journey made me pick up a second or third copy of Roger Reeves's King Me because I ended up driving down to Money, Miss., and further into the Delta. King Me made me go searching for Jean Toomer's Cane and Zora Neale Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road. Hurston's grace and excellence sent me back, gratefully, into the words of Henry Dumas, Langston Hughes, and Robert Hayden. While I was in Portland, I caught up with Matthew Dickman but was so shy about meeting him I forgot to ask him to sign the hardcover of Mayakovsky's Revolver I'd stashed in my rental car. And when I traveled down to Santa Fe to teach at IAIA (Institute of American Indian Arts), I dove again into Sherwin Bitsui's Flood Song and read Jessica Jacobs's Pelvis with Distance because I was in Georgia O'Keeffe country. I'm still working through O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz's letters, My Faraway One, and made some serious dents in it this year. I've opened up Vladimir Nabokov's Letters to Véra and placed those two near each other, like constellations, in my reading stack. Speaking of women artists, I reread the Diary of Frida Kahlo and Hayden Herrera's biography of Frida Kahlo because I curated the Poetry Society of America's Poetry Walk for the New York Botanical Garden's astonishing exhibition "Frida Kahlo: Art Garden Life." Lucky for me, I got to spend lots and lots of time with the poetry of Octavio Paz, one of my favorites! A dear friend just sent me a copy of Larry Levis’s The Darkening Trapeze. Literally, I've been hiding out in my house to devour it in one sitting, which obviously led to a second sitting so I could read the entire book aloud. But I had to leave my house eventually, so Levis has been riding the subways with me. We're great company for each other. Reading Levis, of course, made me pick up Philip Levine’s What Work Is again and that somehow made me pull out W.S. Merwin, Mark Strand, and Jack Gilbert. When I journeyed to Vermont for the Brattleboro Festival, I cried at a moving tribute for Galway Kinnell and that made me buy another copy of The Book of Nightmares, which made me stay up all night in my hotel room reading aloud, remembering once how I'd been fortunate enough to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge with Kinnell and so many other poets like Cornelius Eady and Marilyn Nelson and Martín Espada. And I think it was over 90 degrees out and Bill Murray walked across that day with us too.  Anyway, Kinnell pushed me toward Seamus Heaney and Czesław Miłosz. Throw in Tomas Tranströmer and Amiri Baraka's SOS: 1961 - 2013, and somehow eventually I'm holding Federico García Lorca, who is always near, and whose words also travel with me on trains, planes, and dreams. When I read poetry I’ll sometimes take down several poets who may or may not be speaking clearly to one another in some tone or mood or style. It helps me hear each of them even more clearly. Finally, I think, if there’s time, the last two things I hope to read (again) before 2016 arrives will be Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and the letters of Vincent Van Gogh. As I sit here looking at the bookshelves crammed with new books, I simply sigh in joy and think, too, of the stacks of books at my visual art studio nearby. This year I'm a reader for something for PEN, which means in the last months I've read over 50 books by writers of color, including poetry, fiction, and non fiction. Thinking just of that list alone, there are far too many books this year for me to include here. How wonderful! We're all better for it! So, here, quickly, are some more titles, both old and new, that changed me, whether by their grief, their beauty, their joy, their violence, their ambition, their desire, their imagination, their history, or future, but always, by their truth and courage: Ross Gay, Unabashed Catalogues of Gratitude Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn; Lighthead Patrick Phillips, Elegy for a Broken Machine Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus Jack Gilbert, Collected Carl Phillips, Reconnaissance Nicholas Wong, Crevasse Vievee Francis, Forest Primeval Kyle Dargan, Honest Engine Nick Flynn, My Feelings Tonya M. Foster, A Swarm of Bees in High Court Rickey Laurentiis, Boy with Thorn Jonathan Moody, Olympic Butter Gold Margo Jefferson, Negroland Chris Abani, Song for Night Rick Barot, Chord Major Jackson, Roll Deep Yesenia Montilla, The Pink Box Randall Horton, Hook Parneshia Jones, Vessel Ellen Hagan, Hemisphere Yusef Komunyakaa, The Emperor of Water Clocks Audrey Niffenegger, Raven Girl Michael Klein, When I Was a Twin Patti Smith, M Train Marie Cardinal, The Words to Say It Dawn Lundy Martin, Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life Michel Archimbaud, Francis Bacon: In Conversation with Michel Archimbaud Paul Beatty, The Sellout Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping; Lila Chinelo Okparanta, Under the Udala Trees Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite, War of the Encyclopaedists Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer Marie Mockett, Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel Naomi Jackson, The Star Side of Bird Hill Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists More from A Year in Reading 2015 Don't miss: A Year in Reading 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 The good stuff: The Millions' Notable articles The motherlode: The Millions' Books and Reviews Like what you see? 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I read every book I can find most years, because I have little children who are in bed by 7 p.m., and because I live in a small town in Florida with not a whole lot to do, and because I usually find mingling with other humans to be absolutely terrifying. But this year I had one of my reading black holes in the spring, when I just couldn't sit still long enough to make it through weighty books. It's an ugly lapse when reading is basically your job. It all got worse this fall when I was on the road and usually too tired to do more than eat cold french fries and glower at my fellow travelers, so what made it into the brainpan was shorter, sharper work, not the elephants and juggernauts of the year. That said, a number of books thrilled me. Here are my 10 favorite books that I read in 2015. I loved Terrance Hayes's poetry collection How to Be Drawn, as well as Karen Solie's collection The Road in Is Not the Same Road Out. My favorite novel was the fourth Elena Ferrante Neapolitan novel, The Story of the Lost Child, but what I really mean is that the fourth book itself is very good, but the entirety of the project is phenomenal, meaty, brain-breaking. These story collections slayed me: Lucia Berlin's A Manual for Cleaning Women, Joy Williams's The Visiting Privilege, and Colin Barrett's Young Skins. And I loved four beauts to be published in the U.S. next year, the novels High Dive by Jonathan Lee, The Vegetarian by the South Korean writer Han Kang, and Sudden Death by the Mexican writer Álvaro Enrigue, and a beautiful graphic novel by my friend Tom Hart called Rosalie Lightning, which is pure pain made beautiful by art and attention. More from A Year in Reading 2015 Don't miss: A Year in Reading 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 The good stuff: The Millions' Notable articles The motherlode: The Millions' Books and Reviews Like what you see? Learn about 5 insanely easy ways to Support The Millions, and follow The Millions on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr.

In January I vowed to purchase and read as much poetry as I read fiction. I traveled more this year than ever before, mostly in support of my novel, and poetry became a way to keep good words on my person without lugging around a heavy hardcover. For a fiction writer like me, who loves clause-heavy sentences and a good, chunky paragraph, poetry reminds me that every word and every sound can and should be considered. The poetry I read, in the order acquired: Prelude to Bruise, by Saeed Jones Citizen, by Claudia Rankine Blue Yodel, by Ansel Elkins Hemming the Water, by Yona Harvey Gabriel, by Edward Hirsch How to Be Drawn, by Terrance Hayes [Insert] Boy, by Danez Smith Boy With Thorn, by Rickey Laurentiis Voyage of the Sable Venus, by Robin Coste Lewis Bright Dead Things, by Ada Limón An unexpected and wonderful thing happened as a result of putting my first book out this year: I read a good amount of 2015 releases. It usually takes me a while to learn about new books, and longer still to read them, but there’s only so many times you can see your book alongside other good-looking ones in bookstores and in the press before you pick them up and see what’s what. Disgruntled, by Asali Solomon Diamond Head, by Cecily Wong Under the Udala Trees, by Chinelo Okparanta Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, by Julie Iromuanya Mrs. Engels, by Gavin McCrea The Star Side of Bird Hill, by Naomi Jackson Bright Lines, by Tanwi Nandini Islam The Light of the World, by Elizabeth Alexander Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates More from A Year in Reading 2015 Don't miss: A Year in Reading 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 The good stuff: The Millions' Notable articles The motherlode: The Millions' Books and Reviews Like what you see? Learn about 5 insanely easy ways to Support The Millions, and follow The Millions on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr.