Powerful and devastating. The language is so concise and brilliantly moving. Every word makes a massive impact in this slim, arresting poem.
The BrushThe Brush by Eliana Hernández-Pachón, (List Price: $17, Archipelago, 9781953861863, March 2024)
Reviewed by Emily Tarr, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama
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Perfectly positioned for Poetry Month and Earth Day, Poetrees is a poetry book, an art book, and a science primer all in one. From the humble seed to the Giant Sequoia there’s sure to be an ode to your favorite forest giant.
PoetreesPoetrees by Douglas Florian, (List Price: $8.99, Beach Lane Books, 9781665957946, April 2024)
Reviewed by Angie Tally, The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, North Carolina
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What I hope is the beginning of a Leila Mottley renaissance, woke up no light is a poetry collection that solidifies Mottley’s status as one of our time’s best new young writers. Split into four sections defined as girlhood, neighborhood, falsehood, and womanhood, Mottley’s poetry reads as tender yet raw, her musings especially on womanhood and coming into your own are glittering pieces of writing that any reader can acknowledge are full of both heart, hardships, and truth. A remarkable collection for people looking to get into poetry, or for the established readers of the genre!
woke up no light by Leila Mottley, (List Price: $28, Knopf, 9780593319710, April 2024)
Reviewed by Grace Sullivan, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia
woke up no light by Leila Mottley Read More »
A bilingual and elegiac collection that explores transnational sorrow with an openness to delving into the gulfs loss creates, rather than succumbing to them. Memories of family and political histories intertwine with cultural unrest and the sensorially intimate to form poems with a sketchy quality—much like the drawings in the book—with deep feeling and sense of possibility. Disarmingly beautiful.
The Blue Mimes by Sara Daniele Rivera, (List Price: $17, Graywolf Press, 9781644452790, April 2024)
Reviewed by Luis Correa, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
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Mary Oliver writes poetry for the soul. I have never felt so seen that when I read the words she has so lovingly crafted. Her poetry is simple and uncomplicated but will strum your heartstrings in perfect rhythm. Oliver understands the human need for unconditional forgiveness.
DevotionsDevotions by Mary Oliver, (List Price: $20, Penguin Books, 9780399563263, November 2020)
Reviewed by Faith Skowronnek, Epilogue: Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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This collection is a welcomed haunting, visceral and animal, an aching in your bones no matter how tenderly you’re held. Some of my favorites read like a whispered denunciation, so deeply intimate and all the more powerful, as though excavating the self, a history, and society itself with a partner rather than an audience. Both rooted in place and observed from a distance, these poems balance rich imagery with the complexity of memory, the language nearing the ethereal.
Judas Goat by Gabrielle Bates, (List Price: $16.95, Tin House Books, 9781953534644, January 2023)
Reviewed by Miranda Sanchez, Epilogue: Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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In Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, you can truly feel what she felt as she wrote these poems. It is about the ups and downs of a breakup and learning to love yourself by yourself. It is a beautiful collection of poems.
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, (List Price: $19.99, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 9781449496364, September 2018)
Reviewed by Alex Reno, The Blytheville Book Company in Blytheville, Arkansas
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Totally unlike any poetry collection I’ve ever read before. The harsh descriptions of World War I, in lyric conversation with the innocence and virtue of a schoolboy, make this collection so sublime and reverential.
School of Instructions by Ishion Hutchinson, (List Price: $26, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 9780374610265, November 2023)
Reviewed by Emily Tarr, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama
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Clint Smith’s latest collection of poems is so good. I love how he intersperses poems about his first child with poems about the state of America as a whole. His voice is soft and sharp at the same time, and works so well in both settings.
Above Ground by Clint Smith, (List Price: 27, Little, Brown and Company, 9780316543033, March 2023)
Reviewed by Daniel Jordan, Pearl’s Books in Fayetteville, Arkansas
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April 2023 Why Poetry? 
This month’s special edition of The Southern Bookseller Review celebrates our impulse to write poetry, the form of storytelling closest to a heartbeat. “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” -Plato |
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Read This Now! Recommended by Southern indies… |
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World by Ana Luísa Amaral Adult Fiction, European, Poetry, Spanish & Portuguese For poetry on joy, wonder, and passion found through the observation of nature, look no further than World, a posthumous work by Portuguese poet Ana Luisa Amaral. Filled with odes and paens to spiders, magpies, and centipedes, World reads like a cheerful wave goodbye to a beautiful planet. Each translated poem sits alongside the original Portuguese, and through both we enter a unique vision of the tiny garden growing in Amaral’s heart. Grand and affirming, Amaral returns to the spring of life with the clarity of winter. Reviewed by Amanda Depperschmidt, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia |
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Bookseller Buzz |
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Spotlight on: Above Ground by Clint Smith
Most of these poems were written as the things were happening, because for me, poetry is the act of paying attention. It is both the creation of art and the mechanism through which I do my best thinking. For me, the poems are time capsules, little archives that allow me to capture a moment or a feeling. And excavating the granularity of those moments makes me more appreciative of those moments as a whole, so the next time a version of that happens, I’m able to more fully be there with it. The period of time during which your kids are both physically able and emotionally willing to have a dance party with you in the kitchen is pretty brief. I think writing poetry helps me hold onto those moments in the same way that a photograph does." ―Clint Smith, Interview, Esquire What booksellers are saying about Above Ground 
About Clint Smith Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. He is also the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review. and elsewhere. Clint received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and a Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University. |
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The Wonder Paradox by Jennifer Michael Hecht Adult Nonfiction, Poetry, Religion, Spirituality In this warm and wise invitation to a poetry-enriched life, atheist poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht shows us how to gather our own collection of poems for daily practices, holidays, celebrations, and even emergencies, all through exploring how world religions, art, and science address the subject of each chapter, introducing a relevant poem, and offering a poetry lesson—from alliteration to Japanese list poems to Romanticism and beyond. Reviewed by Megan Bell, Underground Books in Carrollton, Georgia |
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Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco by K. Iver Adult Nonfiction, LGBTQ, Poetry This is a collection about grief, a persistent grief so steady, so patient, that it grows dear. Iver’s words are cinematic, their poems traceable stories by themselves that resonate and interact with each poem that follows it. I think A Medium Performs Your Visit and Who Is This Grief For? are the highlights of the collection. "My acupuncturist says/ you enjoy this, don’t you./ She’s talking about my grief. I say who else will." Reviewed by Sam Edge, Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina |
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Couplets by Maggie Millner Adult Nonfiction, LGBTQ, Poetry Couplets is a fresh and modern poetry collection that delves into polyamory, identity, and queerness amongst other themes. A love story written in stanzas, but reads like a novel or a short story, I truly cannot get enough of this. We follow one woman’s coming out and the love she yearns and searches for. A fantastic meditation not just on queerness, but also relationships as a whole, I cant recommend it enough. Reviewed by Grace Sullivan, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia |
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Animals in Pants by Suzy Levinson Children, Juvenile Fiction, Poetry Practically Perfect for Poetry month, this pants filled picture book will tickle the funny bone of preschoolers and parents alike! Reviewed by Angie Tally, The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, North Carolina |
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Parting Thought “A poet’s work … to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it from going to sleep.” |
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The Southern Bookseller Review: Why Poetry? Read More »
Most of these poems were written as the things were happening, because for me, poetry is the act of paying attention. It is both the creation of art and the mechanism through which I do my best thinking. For me, the poems are time capsules, little archives that allow me to capture a moment or a feeling. And excavating the granularity of those moments makes me more appreciative of those moments as a whole, so the next time a version of that happens, I’m able to more fully be there with it. The period of time during which your kids are both physically able and emotionally willing to have a dance party with you in the kitchen is pretty brief. I think writing poetry helps me hold onto those moments in the same way that a photograph does.” ―Clint Smith, Interview, Esquire
What booksellers are saying about Above Ground
About Clint Smith
Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. He is also the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review. and elsewhere. Clint received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and a Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University.
Spotlight on: Above Ground by Clint Smith Read More »
Couplets is a fresh and modern poetry collection that delves into polyamory, identity, and queerness amongst other themes. A love story written in stanzas, but reads like a novel or a short story, I truly cannot get enough of this. We follow one woman’s coming out and the love she yearns and searches for. A fantastic meditation not just on queerness, but also relationships as a whole, I cant recommend it enough.
Couplets by Maggie Millner, (List Price: 25, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 9780374607951, February 2023)
Reviewed by Grace Sullivan, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia
Couplets by Maggie Millner Read More »
For poetry on joy, wonder, and passion found through the observation of nature, look no further than World, a posthumous work by Portuguese poet Ana Luisa Amaral. Filled with odes and paens to spiders, magpies, and centipedes, World reads like a cheerful wave goodbye to a beautiful planet. Each translated poem sits alongside the original Portuguese, and through both we enter a unique vision of the tiny garden growing in Amaral’s heart. Grand and affirming, Amaral returns to the spring of life with the clarity of winter.
World by Ana Luísa Amaral, (List Price: 16.95, New Directions, 9780811234832, April 2023)
Reviewed by Amanda Depperschmidt, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia
World by Ana Luísa Amaral Read More »
Those who spent a lot of time on the spoken word poetry side of Youtube in the 2010s will recognize Savannah Brown, who’s been bearing her soul for the internet for almost a decade. I was happy to find with this collection, that Brown’s poems have matured while maintaining the same vulnerability, humor, and unabashed desire for attention. Written in free verse and unconventional format, Brown delivers intimacy for the digital age, capturing the feelings of (among other things) being loved and in-love, jealousy and guilt. Skillfully, sensually written and easily digestible!
Closer Baby Closer by Savannah Brown, (List Price: 18.95, Not a Cult, 9781739618100, February 2023)
Reviewed by Julia Lewis, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia
Closer Baby Closer by Savannah Brown Read More »
While I love poetry, I will admit to being a beginning reader still finding my way and what I like in the genre. Some of my favorite contemporary poets (and pretty much all of the dead ones) are so depressing though. Beautiful and powerful, but depressing. The Path To Kindness was an unexpected discovery! This anthology explores the themes of connection and joy. Uplifting and accessible from diverse voices, I turn to it often and have given many copies to friends.
The Path to Kindness by James Crews, (List Price: 14.95, Storey Publishing, LLC, 9781635865332, April 2023)
Reviewed by Kelly Justice, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia
The Path to Kindness by James Crews Read More »
