Etel Adnan, Suzanne Buffam & More Chosen for New York Times's Best Poetry of 2016

David Orr has picked his favorite books of poetry from 2016 for the New York Times. "Here are 10 poetry collections published in 2016 that do the art form proud, even if none of their authors are likely to appear at the inauguration." His choices throw some light on small presses, including Suzanne Buffam's A Pillow Book (House of Anansi) and Etel Adnan's Night (Nightboat). "I’ve also generally favored work by poets I haven’t written about in previous years, as well as books not already featured on the year-end lists of other Times critics," says Orr. A closer look:

NIGHT, by Etel Adnan (Nightboat, paper, $12.95). A fragmentary, aphoristic examination of night in all its illuminating darkness from a Lebanese-American poet who is also an admired visual artist.

A PILLOW BOOK, by Suzanne Buffam (Canarium, paper, $14). The original “Pillow Book” was written by a lady of the Japanese court named Sei Shonagon around the turn of the 11th century, and was an assortment of fragmentary observations, musings and philosophical asides. In her own fearful, funny and bracingly intelligent version, which is sometimes in dialogue with Shonagon’s, Buffam gives us the night thoughts of an insomniac on motherhood, aging, relationships, guilty pleasures (“beating a child at checkers”), things that are “unendurable” (“Dreadlocks on a WASP”) and mustaches, among many other subjects.

BESTIARY, by Donika Kelly (Graywolf, paper, $16). Kelly’s first book offers glassy, sculpted surfaces beneath which thoroughly black water churns (“I wake each morning / And am disappointed in the waking”). But her collection, which as its title implies is filled with symbolic creatures, is a testament to poetry’s ability to capture and refine emotion (“I filled the buckets / with salt / from my own / body”), rather than merely reflect it.

THE AFTER PARTY, by Jana Prikryl (Tim Duggan/Crown, paper, $15). Prikryl’s debut is a gratifying demonstration of (among other things) the warmth and wit of poetry’s formal architecture; we are far removed here from the sad, crumpled land of line-broken prose in which so many contemporary collections dwell. “His feeling is metaphor so complete,” she writes in “Unrequited,” “it’s the hum alone on loan from the hive.” It’s hard to say what is better in those last seven words, the thinking or the sonic arrangement — which is exactly the argument a good poem ought to inspire.

Find the full list at the New York Times!