Original, inventive: we want our poets to be bold. We want the poems to add up to more than the sum of their parts. We want the sublime, the open-to-the-bone exclamation of epiphany. And we’d like the poem to be smart but not too intellectual. Why not? In her second book, The Irrationalist, Suzanne Buffam […]

Nature can be good for us. In a recent study, Japanese scientists found that walking through a forest or other wooded area for a few hours reduced concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol in subjects and lowered blood pressure. Other studies show green areas alleviate anxiety and depression.

Beginning with the decorative language poem, “Drip drip drip drip drip drip drop / …,” that serves as the book’s frontispiece to the lively rift of forty-five names for “the city I cannot name” (after T. S. Eliot’s “Unreal City”) in the title poem, John Beer’s language fuels a successful momentum.

Winner of the 2008 Orphic Poetry Book Prize, Kyle McCord’s Galley of the Beloved in Torment presents the reader with a series of desolate landscapes, where “cold wind” drifts through “broken bottles,” “barbed fences,” and the ruins of strange cities.

The spirit of Gertrude Stein’s inquisitions into structure hovers over the opening of Biswamit Dwibedy’s Ozalid. The formatting of the table of contents, a block of text composed of poem titles clustered in close quarters, happily upsets expectations.

Daniel Tiffany’s highly musical collection The Dandelion Clock presents Middle English phrases alongside song lyrics, street slang, and popular ephemera, suggesting that a complex social history informs much of contemporary literature.