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2021 Featured Fall Books
New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Nane) edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani
Akashic Books, September 2021
Featuring poetry by Selina Nwulu, Ayan M. Omar, Jeremy Teddy Karn, Ajibola Tolase, Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu, Sara Elkamel, Precious Arinze, Lameese Badr, Qutouf Yahia, Edil Hassan, Kolawole Adebayo, Cynthia Amoah, and Saradha Soobrayen.
The Animal Indoors by Carly Inghram
Autumn House Press, September 2021
The Animal Indoors by Carly Inghram explores the day-to-day experiences of a Black queer woman who is bombarded with images of mass consumerism, white supremacy, and sexism.
Luminous Blue Variables and Other Major Poems by Michelle Boisseau
BkMk Press, November 2021
“Of whom or what does she not speak? Pliny the Elder, the Stasi and the Berlin Wall, Voltaire, slavery, the Gestapo, her father, and, in a language that glistens, Danaë in her ‘tower of light.’”—Alice Friman
You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson
Button Poetry, November 2021
A queer, political, and feminist collection guided by self-reflection. One of the most celebrated poets and performers of the last two decades, Andrea Gibson’s trademark honesty and vulnerability are on full display.
Her Kind by Cindy Veach
CavanKerry Press, October 2021
Her Kind is a book about women: women viewed as witches; making their own choices; fighting for freedom— innocents used/and or culturally disregarded. This narrative weaves historical events (Salem Witch Trials), personal history, and contemporary political circumstances.
Uncertain Acrobats by Rebecca Hart Olander
CavanKerry Press, November 2021
Musical, genuine, and human, Uncertain Acrobats is a meditation on divorce, family, coming of age, and mortality. In this intimate collection, both the living and dying fumble for balance as life’s end and grief draw near.
ink earl by Susan Holbrook
Coach House Books, September 2021
ink earl takes the popular subgenre of erasure poetry to its illogical conclusion.
Lightning Falls in Love by Laura Kasischke
Copper Canyon Press, September 2021
Expanding her narrative prose prowess, Laura Kasischke balances surrealism and introspection to chart human transgression and its consequences in her twelfth poetry collection, Lightning Falls in Love.
America by Fernando Valverde, translated by Carolyn Forché
Copper Canyon Press, September 2021
Mournfully lyrical, politically sharp, with a sweeping view of American roots, America by one of the most relevant Spanish language poets today, Fernando Valverde, is a book that deconstructs the legacy of empire.
Burying the Mountain by Shangyang Fang
Copper Canyon Press, October 2021
With electric, visceral images, Wallace Stegner fellow Shangyang Fang speaks the languages of loneliness and desire, rendering starkly his loves and losses.
A God at the Door by Tishani Doshi
Copper Canyon Press, November 2021
Forward Poetry Prize winner Tishani Doshi crafts an intimate fourth collection of poems that reclaims the body as a site of immense struggle and beauty.
Winter Phoenix by Sophia Terazawa
Deep Vellum Books, October 2021
A profound debut collection blending testimony and tribunal, Winter Phoenix creates a courtroom for colonial and linguistic reckoning after the Vietnam War.
Habitus by Radna Fabias, translated by David Colmer
Deep Vellum, September 2021
Subversive, visual, and bold, Curaçao-born Dutch Radna Fabias’ explosive debut collecton Habitus marks the entry of a genre-altering poet, the most acclaimed debut ever in the dutch language.
Maroon Choreography by fahima ife
Duke University Press, August 2021
“fahima ife has written a funky, rigorous, and lyrical investigation of what it is to have and not have a body. An incredible tempest of a book.” —Fred Moten
No One's Witness by Rachel Zolf
Duke University Press, August 2021
“No One's Witness shows in brilliant and moving ways how language must change to come close to registering the living aftermath of destruction.” —Judith Butler
Problematica: New and Selected Poems 1995 - 2020 by George Murray
ECW Press, September 2021
Problematica — a scientific term describing species that defy classification. Problematica brings together the best of Murray’s earlier poems and his new work, delving into what it means to arrive, live, and leave.
The Book of Anna by Joy Ladin
EOAGH Books, March 2021
Prose diary entries and autobiographical poems tell the story of Anna Ascher, a fictional Czech-German Jew and Holocaust survivor. Written during Joy Ladin's gender transition, this book was pivotal for the development of her poetics.
Dark Side of the Fence by LaMar S. Giles
First Edition Design Publishing, September 2021
Dark Side of the Fence was sparked by a recent chain of events, leading to the explosion of racial turmoil. This collection explores hunger & homelessness, racism, American society, and the intricacies of music. This collection sheds light on the inequities facing the downtrodden members of society.
Gentefication by Antonio de Jesús López
Four Way Books, September 2021
Winner of the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry, selected by Gregory Pardlo. From its titular portmanteau, Gentefication represents Latinx death as a loss first encountered through language. It asks, “what are the hauntings of a tongue coerced to speak English?” and celebrates linguistic resistance, and solidarity, and triumph.
Cutlish by Rajiv Mohabir
Four Way Books, September 2021
In Cutlish, a title referencing the rural recasting of the cutlass, Rajiv Mohabir creates a form migrated from chutney music in order to verse the precarity of a queer Indo-Caribbean speaker in the United States.
Yellow Rain by Mai Der Vang
Graywolf Press, September 2021
In poems that sing, lament, contend, and question, Vang restores a vital Hmong narrative in danger of being lost, and explores what it means to access truth and how marginalized groups are often forbidden that access.
I Remember Death by its Proximity to What I Love by Mahogany L. Browne
Haymarket Books, September 2021
I Remember Death by its Proximity to What I Love’s evocative book-length poem explored the impacts of the prison system on both the incarcerated and the loved ones left behind.
RIFQA by Mohammed El-Kurd
Haymarket Books, October 2021
With razor-sharp wit and glistening moral clarity, Mohammed El-Kurd traces his grandmother, Rifqa’s, exile from Haifa to his family’s current dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, exposing the cyclical and relentless horror of the Nakba.
There are Trans People Here by H. Melt
Haymarket Books, November 2021
With humor and generosity, H. Melt’s debut poetry collection pushes against the belied silence of trans people, looks at trans resilience and joy, and the connection between trans activism and other liberation movements.
Czesław Miłosz: A California Life by Cynthia L. Haven
Heyday Books, October 2021
Filled with original research and written with the grace and liveliness of a novel, Czesław Miłosz: A California Life is both an essential volume for his most devoted readers and a perfect introduction for newcomers.
Years of Fire and Ash: South African Poems of Decolonisation edited and introduced by Wamuwi Mbao
Jonathan Ball Publishers, March 2021
In Years of Fire and Ash: South African Poems of Decolonisation, fifty years of protest poetry are brought together in one volume by literary critic and lecturer Dr. Wamuwi Mbao.
Molière: The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations by Molière, translated by Richard Wilbur
Library of America, November 2021
For the 400th anniversary of the great French playwright’s birth, all ten of Richard Wilbur’s unsurpassed translations of Molière’s plays—towering achievements in English verse—are brought together for the first time in this two-volume gift set.
Vestigial by Aja Couchois Duncan
Litmus Press, August 2021
“Vestigial is a flesh epic braiding time and bodies... At scales simultaneously intimate and monumental, the poet resists the figurative to orchestrate eros, violence, and corporeal transformation. This is visionary work.”— Douglas Kearney
Body Was by Isabelle Garron, translated by Eléna Rivera
Litmus Press, October 2021
“In this massive work of tantalizing minimalism, precise specifics work in counterpoint to fluid abstractions... Shore, fire, you—they all return us to the body... Rivera's translation gorgeously captures… the architecture of sound that holds the whole work aloft.” — Cole Swensen
Masquerade by Carolyne Wright
Lost Horse Press, October 2021
Carolyne Wright’s ambitious new collection, Masquerade, recounts the arc of a decades-ago love affair. In the course of the narrative, the poet considers how we return to the wonder and force of feelings, how we try to tame sorrow and regret with words, how words are required to approach the body’s understanding. There are poems here of undeniable formal mastery, and there’s no escaping a kind of almost courageous will to transcend loss and look accountability in the face.
Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief By Victoria Chang
Milkweed Editions, October 2021
“A tender exploration of grief, an excavation into stories untold, memories unshared, the treasures that await our discovery if we trace the lives that held ours.” —Kao Kalia Yang
Philomath: Poems by Devon Walker-Figueroa
Milkweed Editions, September 2021
"Walker-Figueroa's work is powerful, at times mysterious, and a thrilling study of memory, time and events both quotidian and historic . . . Philomath is sure to be a notable debut." —Chicago Review of Books
The Echo Chamber: Poems by Michael Bazzett
Milkweed Editions, October 2021
“The poems in The Echo Chamber boom and toll with history and myth, and into the scorching present tense . . . The Echo Chamber is a masterwork of truth-telling.” —Diane Seuss
English Lit by Bernard Clay
Ohio University Press, August 2021
Affrilachian Poet Bernard Clay narrates his West-Side Louisville upbringing and the complexities of Black Appalachian identity in this debut collection of poems compiled from more than twenty years of work.
Genghis Chan on Drums by John Yau
Omnidawn, October 2021
John Yau’s name is synonymous with esteemed/cutting-edge art criticism and poetry. Arts Editor for Brooklyn Rail (2007–2011), a regular writer for Hyperallergic, Professor of Critical Studies at Mason-Gross School of Arts (Rutgers).
Mutiny by Phillip B. Williams
Penguin Books, September 2021
A bold, intimate, and sonically mesmerizing new collection about revolt and renewal from Phillip B. Williams, the critically acclaimed author of Thief in the Interior who writes with “a lucid, unmitigated humanity” (Boston Review).
The Last Thing: New & Selected Poems by Patrick Rosal
Persea Books, September 2021
A substantial playlist of new work—hard-hitting and big-hearted—along with ample selections from Rosal’s first four books. Infused with love and awe, this is essential reading from a poet of vigor and conscience.
Everything Never Comes Your Way by Nicole Stellon O'Donnell
Red Hen Press, August 2021
Nicole Stellon O’Donnell explores the landscapes of memory, argument, and wilderness by deconstructing memoir, digging at the roots of philosophical argumentation, and critiquing the role of the poet as an observer of the natural world.
A Dangerous Place by Chelsea B. DesAutels
Sarabande Books, October 2021
A speaker survives a pregnancy-caused cancer diagnosis in early motherhood, thrusting her into a world in which sex, pregnancy, marriage, and parenthood are simultaneously life-giving and dangerous. A Dangerous Place is elegant, moving, and transcendental.
The Moon Over Edgar by Ian Felice
Sibling Rivalry Press, February 2022
From the pen that crafted the lyrics of The Felice Brothers’ multiple albums, these 60 linked sonnets invite readers into realms of the strange—fairy tales, prophecies, premonitions—with a powerful sense of beauty.
Punks: New & Selected Poems by John Keene
The Song Cave, December 2021
Punks: New & Selected Poems is a generous gathering of astonishing poems by John Keene. “Keene’s masterfully inventive inquiry of self and history is queered, Blackened, and joyously thick with multitudes of voice and valence.” —Tyehimba Jess
Two Murals by Jesús Castillo
The Song Cave, October 2021
Through two long poems, Jesús Castillo’s Two Murals explores the personal and political sides of love, selfhood, and transformation in a wasteful age. “This book is a gathering inside one heart of many voices and the silences that divide them, a virtuoso performance, spellbinding, funny and profoundly sad.” —D.A. Powell
Wings in Time by Callie Garnett
The Song Cave, September 2021
Callie Garnett’s first full-length collection of poems, Wings in Time, is a book one watches as much as reads. “It is a precisely recorded, remarkably well written, and excitingly well-structured debut.” —Shane McCrae
Dead Girl Dancing by Mike L. Nichols
Tredition GmbH, August 2021
Dead Girl Dancing is a widely accessible treatise on grief and loss. The poems in this debut collection, sprinkled with slant rhyme and sound, provide catharsis for those who’ve experienced death and loss.
Father | Genocide by Margo Tamez
Turtle Point Press, August 2021
Tamez unites Indigenous history and her father’s struggle to “be a man” under American domination in this stunning documentation of violence on the American border.
Harm Eden by Jennifer Nelson
Ugly Duckling Presse, October 2021
Harm Eden examines how our present-day civilization is built on originary and timeless systemic damage, and attempts to think through and simultaneously away from it by exploiting the tension between history and poetry.
I Want Something Other Than Time by Lewis Freedman
Ugly Duckling Presse, October 2021
Across a series of sixty-four poems, each titled with the eponymous refrain, I Want Something Other Than Time worries the problem of self-identically—the distance between the self and the self that recognizes the self.
Gumbo Ya Ya by Aurielle Marie
University of Pittsburgh Press, September 2021
Aurielle Marie’s stunning debut is a cauldron of hearty poems exploring race, gender, desire, and violence in the lives of Black gxrls, soaring against the backdrop of a contemporary South.
The Past by Wendy Xu
Wesleyan University Press, September 2021
Born in Shandong, China, Wendy Xu immigrated to the US in 1989, three days ahead of the events of Tian’anmen Square. The Past probes the multi-generational binds of family, displacement, and immigration as psychic experience without end.
The Uncommon Speech of Paradise: Poems on the Art of Poetry by Robert Hedin and Jim Lenfensty
White Pine Press, September 2021
A showcase for the works of 120 poets including Heaney, Milosz, Neruda, Akhmatova, Ashbery, Dove, Oliver, Harjo, and Stevens. Together, they offer a wide variety of voices, styles, and perspectives on the theory, practice, and purpose of poetry.