Book picks similar to
Kin by Crystal Williams
poetry
zformat-ebook
authors-of-color
literary
The Boss
Victoria Chang - 2013
Obsessive, brilliant, linguistically playful—the mesmerizing world of The Boss is as personal as it is distinctly post-9/11. The result is a breathtaking, one-of-a-kind exploration of contemporary American culture, power structures, family life, and ethnic and personal identity.
The Half-Inch Himalayas
Agha Shahid Ali - 1987
His most recent volumes of poetry are Rooms Are Never Finished and The Country Without a Post Office. He is also the editor of Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English.
Deep Lane: Poems
Mark Doty - 2015
“Pure appetite,” he writes ironically early in the collection, “I wouldn’t know anything about that.” And the following poem answers:Down there the little star-nosed engine of desireat work all night, secretive: in the morninga new line running across the wet grass, near the surface,like a vein. Don’t you wish the road of excessled to the palace of wisdom, wouldn’t that be nice?Deep Lane is a book of descents: into the earth beneath the garden, into the dark substrata of a life. But these poems seek repair, finally, through the possibilities that sustain the speaker aboveground: gardens and animals, the pleasure of seeing, the world tuned by the word. Time and again, an image of immolation and sacrifice is undercut by the fierce fortitude of nature: nature that is not just a solace but a potent antidote and cure. Ranging from agony to rapture, from great depths to hard-won heights, these are poems of grace and nobility.
some planet
jamie mortara - 2015
some planet is what it’s like to be a human. existing in one’s mind, in one’s body, in one’s world, in one’s galaxy, all tiny universes inside tiny universes all locked in fevered conversation. some planet is the coin in your pocket when you don't know how to choose. some planet is when everything is both itself and simultaneously else. jamie mortara is leading you through the woods by the hand, trying to get you home safe before sun goes down.
I Wore My Blackest Hair
Carlina Duan - 2017
With defiance and wild joy, Duan’s poems wrestle with and celebrate ancestry and history, racial consciousness, and the growing pains of girlhood. They explore difficult truths with grace and power. I Wore My Blackest Hair is an honest portrait of a woman in-between—identities, places, languages, and desires—and her quest to belong. The speaker is specific in her self-definition, discovering and reinventing what it means to be a bold woman, what it means to be Chinese American, and what it means to grow into adulthood. Duan moves seamlessly from the personal to the imaginative to the universal, heralding a brilliant new voice in contemporary poetry.
Curses and Wishes: Poems
Carl Adamshick - 2011
The poet has faith in economy and trusts in images to transfer knowledge that speech cannot. In Curses and Wishes the short, simple lines add up to a thoughtful book possessed with lyrical melancholy, a harmony of sadness and joy that sings: May happiness be a wheel, a lit throne, spinning / in the vast pinprick of darkness. By the close of this ambitious work the poet has inspired readers to see the multifaceted effects of our human connections.
Plot
Claudia Rankine - 2001
Liv, an expectant mother, and her husband, Erland, are at an impasse from her reluctance to bring new life into a bewildering world. The couple's journey is charted through conversations, dreams, memories, and meditations, expanding and exploding the emotive capabilities of language and form. A text like no other, it crosses genres, combining verse, prose, and dialogue to achieve an unparalleled understanding of creation and existence.