Library Journal Reviews & Recommends 12 Forthcoming Books of Poetry

Library Journal Reviews collects 12 new poetry collections that may bring "fresh perspective on the human experience." Reviewed here are highly anticipated books like Dawn Lundy Martin's Good Stock Strange Blood (Coffee House, August); Danez Smith's Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf, September); and Henry Wei Leung's Goddess of Democracy: an Occupy lyric (Omnidawn, October), which won the 2016 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Prize, judged by Cathy Park Hong. Barbara Hoffert writes of the latter:

Addressed to the Goddess of Democracy, the huge papier-mâché statue erected in Tiananmen Square during the 1989 protests, and to replicas around the world, this Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Prize winner bears witness to the ongoing struggle for human rights up to the 2014 Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong. Leung describes events through a spray of sharp images—“Late night diaspora sweats// Exile dread”—and though headnotes to many poems helpfully give historical context, the writing never turns didactic. We experience the protests at street level through a “torn off” I both inside and outside the movement: “I myself have been here:/ been a hollowing throng of sweat/ …I stood among and gave you/ neither stay nor shore nor help.” Though Leung points to Theseus as building democracy from “Aphrodite Pandemos, and Peitho:/ desire, and persuasion,” the poet seeks to define it in his own way: “But maybe love is best indifferent./ Democracy, too.” And elsewhere, “Let me be your country. Let me be nothing for you,” suggesting both plan and possibility. Throughout, there’s a grappling, an urgency, and a passion that makes the experience very real. VERDICT Sometimes challenging, but a strong testimony in verse for those interested in both poetry and politics.

Read all 12 early reviews at LJ Reviews. At top: Henry Wei Leung.