PSA features New American Poetry participants writing on their fave first-book authors

The Poetry Society of America has been presenting the biennial New American Poetry Series, "which recognizes some of the most interesting recent first book poets, as well as the annual PSA chapbook contest winners," since 2003. And now, for their fifth anniversary of the feature, they've asked previous New American Poetry participants to select and write a brief introduction to their favorite first book poet. The 2011 feature features the following (alliteration alert! oh dear):

Orlando White, selected by Kazim Ali

Karen Weiser, selected by Prageeta Sharma

Shane Book, selected by Thomas Sayers Ellis

Tim Z. Hernandez, selected by Major Jackson

Farid Matuk, selected by Geoffrey G. O'Brien

Ashley Capps, selected by Oni Buchanan

Dilruba Ahmed, selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Amanda Nadelberg, selected by Chris Martin

Reginald Dwayne Betts, selected by Jericho Brown

J. Michael Martinez, selected by Carmen Giménez Smith

Robert Fernandez, selected by Robyn Schiff

Joshua Edwards, selected by Srikanth Reddy

James Shea, selected by Sarah Gridley

giovanni singleton, selected by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Elyse Fenton, selected by Rachel Zucker

Jonathan Thirkield, selected by Arda Collins

Speaking of Farid Matuk's "empathic imagination," Geoffrey G. O'Brien writes:

[Matuk] will not sacrifice the glory of the incessant ocean, the mutation's of sunset's internal differences, nor any affectionate, jaunty declarations of love for his partner Susan and their dog, but he will not pretend those avowals and their objects don't happen in a world that has also permitted countless lynchings and fatal border-crossings and hate speech—all those waves too are part of an ongoing singable tally. The book ends with a series of "Tallying Song[s]," a phrase borrowed from Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd," and like Whitman, that earlier poet of ecstatic and solemn inventories of difference, Matuk seeks to "accommodate the earth" in all its social and phenomenal variety, opportunity, and damage. It's why a poem about Richard Pryor and race relations can end "Birds in song / spit gold ropes"—the poet's gaze can make "thin relation" of anything because "everything / happens beneath the cover /of something else, something prettier / now there are Arab African boys everywhere" and even the words "is" and "a" can unite to form a new neighborhood.

Read all of the introductions here.