Bound Together 2023: Poetry
14 new books of poetry are featured in this exciting guide, including titles from Forrest Gander, Ada Limón, and Matthew Zapruder.
GRIEF LOGIC, By Crystal AC Salas
GUNPOWDER PRESS • APRIL 2022 • 44 PAGES • $10 PAPERBACK
Co-winner of the Gunpowder Press Alta California Chapbook Prize, this bilingual collection of poetry transports readers to a Latinx world. Crystal AC Salas’s poems delve into family dynamics and challenges posed by culture and femininity, often with profound tenderness.
IN A FEW MINUTES BEFORE LATER, By Brenda Hillman
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS • OCTOBER 2022 • 200 PAGES • $26 HARDCOVER
On the dedication page to this book, Brenda Hillman writes that the poems in it were composed “half before & half during the pandemic.” Their subjects range from commuting to race to politics to marriage to impending doom. Her verses—brimming with unconventional formats and punctuation—traverse time and space.
WIND, TREES, By John Freeman
COPPER CANYON PRESS • OCTOBER 2022 • 96 PAGES • $17 PAPERBACK
Alta Journal California Book Club host John Freeman’s poems are intimate, meditative, and pressing, beckoning readers to feel the tension in our world and to adapt with grace. The wind offers lessons about unpredictability and control; the trees are symbols of community, support, and cohabitation. His North Star is love and its capacity for redemption.
MEET ME AT THE LIGHTHOUSE, By Dana Gioia
GRAYWOLF PRESS • FEBRUARY 2023 • 72 PAGES • $16 PAPERBACK
In this ode to his immigrant family, former California poet laureate Dana Gioia shows readers Los Angeles as it once was. His poems include thoughts about the people who shaped his life, among them his great-grandfather (a vaquero), his uncle (a merchant marine), and other relatives. The Lighthouse of the title (a run-down nightclub Gioia once frequented) serves as the backdrop for his meditations on memory and nostalgia.
TO THE REALIZATION OF PERFECT HELPLESSNESS, By Robin Coste Lewis
KNOPF • DECEMBER 2022 • 384 PAGES • $35 HARDCOVER
The winner of the National Book Award for Poetry for Voyage of the Sable Venus—a 2021 Alta Journal California Book Club pick—Robin Coste Lewis draws inspiration from photographs found under her grandmother’s bed for this new collection. Her poems accompany these images of Black life in the 20th century, rejecting a narrative of pain for one of accomplishment, intimacy, and celebration. The result is a beautiful, immersive experience and tribute to Lewis’s ancestors.
THE ASKING: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, By Jane Hirshfield
KNOPF • SEPTEMBER 2023 • 368 PAGES • $35 HARDCOVER
Jane Hirshfield’s poetry manages to capture both the overwhelming magnitude and the infinitesimal minutiae of the planet—and the human experience of it. This collection pulls from 50 years of work to examine feelings of curiosity, awe, and an inevitable confusion while also accepting them. As ever, Hirshfield relentlessly explores the meaning of choice, language, and healing.
LEANING TOWARD LIGHT: POEMS FOR GARDENS & THE HANDS THAT TEND THEM, Edited by Tess Taylor
Poet and gardener Tess Taylor edits this collection of writing that unearths, reflects, and honors humans’ bonds with plants and other leafy organisms. The poems here—including those by Alta Journal contributors Jane Hirshfield and U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón—are accompanied by personal recipes and meditations to help readers slow down and interact with the wonders of nature.
STORY OF A POEM, By Matthew Zapruder
UNNAMED PRESS • APRIL 2023 • 207 PAGES • $28 HARDCOVER
Poetry contains life, but the converse is also true. Matthew Zapruder discovers this connection—between writing and existing—after setting out to compose and to record the making of one poem. In the process, he reflects on his son’s autism and wrestles with his own helplessness. Love, triumph, and anguish reveal themselves in Zapruder’s writing, shining a light on him and on humankind.
THIS WANDERING STATE: POEMS FROM ALTA, Edited by Kim Shuck
CALIFORNIA INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER • JANUARY 2023 • 90 PAGES • $15.99 PAPERBACK
The CALIBA Poetry Project, founded by Calvin Crosby and Kim Shuck, San Francisco’s seventh poet laureate, presents the first book in its regional poetry series. Featuring works by more than 40 poets and artists, including Tongo Eisen-Martin, the late Jack Hirschman, and Ruth Asawa, the collection—which, like Alta Journal, borrows from the old name Alta California for its title—showcases San Francisco poets who use the city as a launchpad to consider life, culture, and place.
UNCOLLECTED POEMS, DRAFTS, FRAGMENTS, AND TRANSLATIONS, By Gary Snyder
COUNTERPOINT PRESS • AUGUST 2022 • 112 PAGES • $20 HARDCOVER
Acclaimed poet Gary Snyder’s lesser-seen writings are brought into the spotlight in this collection gathered from his casual notations, personal journals, and other productive ramblings. Nature and history come under the poet’s gaze in the latest of over 20 titles by the Pulitzer Prize winner.
KNOT, By Forrest Gander
COPPER CANYON PRESS • NOVEMBER 2022 • 72 PAGES • $22 HARDCOVER
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Forrest Gander found himself entranced by a series of images captured by artist Jack Shear that depicted a nude male body engaged in an elaborate performance with a large bolt of fabric. Here, Gander uses his poetry to investigate Shear’s photographs so as to contemplate the nature of time, life, and loss.
THE HURTING KIND, By Ada Limón
MILKWEED EDITIONS • MAY 2022 • 128 PAGES • $24 HARDCOVER
U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón examines the connections between life in all its forms and through its never-ending cycle of seasons. She reveals the infinite ways that living things think, communicate, know, grieve, and survive. Above all, this collection is a celebration of those who are attuned to the delicate, complex balance of nature and the joy and sorrow of the world.
POUKAHANGATUS, BY TAYI TIBBLE
KNOPF • JULY 2022 • 96 PAGES • $27 HARDCOVER
Grandmothers, mothers, daughters, ancient goddesses, and princesses are held aloft by Tayi Tibble’s fantastical, exuberant verse. In this collection, Tibble invites readers on a quest of introspection as she delves into her own contradictions and those of society. She considers her Māori heritage, settler colonialism, and popular culture, fully engaging with everything she turns her gaze to.
WE ARE MERMAIDS, By Stephanie Burt
GRAYWOLF PRESS • OCTOBER 2022 • 120 PAGES • $17 PAPERBACK
With this collection, Stephanie Burt tests the boundaries of imagination, feelings, language, and syntax as she reaches for something more. Each of Burt’s poems offers infinite readings, and a certain joy and acceptance seep out from every page.
