Enter

New Poetry Releases – May 14, 2019

New Poetry Releases May 14 2019
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Get the inside scoop on the newest poetry collection released this week.

Apologies That Never Came by Pierre Alex Jeanty

Description: Self-made poet and social media sensation Pierre Jeanty has triumphed once again with his most recent collection, Apologies That Never Came. From words that never left your mouth to feelings you held on to, these words explore an unspoken space in heartbreak and pain, providing solace to the wounded soul. 

With massive social media followings and a loyal fan base, Jeanty is poised for great success for his sixth poetry collection entitled Apologies That Never Came. In this series of prose and poetry, both the words and sentiment are simple, uninterrupted by excess flair or complexity. Apologies That Never Came dissects the agony of heartbreak and loss through the unexpressed words and feelings; what is left over at the end. While his poems and prose delve into pain, they ultimately transcend that heartbreak, awakening everyone’s preexisting strength and capacity for growth. Much like in his previous collections, Jeanty has successfully created a tool for unity and healing out of the torment of his experiences. 

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way by Ursula K. Le Guin

New Poetry: Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

Description: No other English translation of this greatest of the Chinese classics can match Ursula Le Guin’s striking new version. Le Guin, best known for thought-provoking science fiction novels that have helped to transform the genre, has studied the Tao Te Ching for more than forty years. She has consulted the literal translations and worked with Chinese scholars to develop a version that lets the ancient text speak in a fresh way to modern people, while remaining faithful to the poetic beauty of the work. Avoiding scholarly interpretations and esoteric Taoist insights, she has revealed the Tao Te Ching ‘s immediate relevance and power, its depth and refreshing humor, in a way that shows better than ever before why it has been so much loved for more than 2,500 years. Included are Le Guin’s own personal commentary and notes on the text. This new version is sure to be welcomed by the many readers of the Tao Te Ching as well as those coming to the text for the first time.

Lima:: Limón by Natalie Scenters-Zapico

Description: In her striking second collection, Natalie Scenters-Zapico sets her unflinching gaze once again on the borders of things. Lima :: Limón illuminates both the sweet and the sour of the immigrant experience, of life as a woman in the U.S. and Mexico, and of the politics of the present day. Drawing inspiration from the music of her childhood, her lyrical poems focus on the often-tested resilience of women. Scenters-Zapico writes heartbreakingly about domestic violence and its toxic duality of macho versus hembra, of masculinity versus femininity, and throws into harsh relief the all-too-normalized pain that women endure. Her sharp verse and intense anecdotes brand her poems into the reader; images like the Virgin Mary crying glass tears and a border fence that leaves never-healing scars intertwine as she stares down femicide and gang violence alike. Unflinching, Scenters-Zapico highlights the hardships and stigma immigrants face on both sides of the border, her desire to create change shining through in every line. Lima :: Limón is grounding and urgent, a collection that speaks out against violence and works toward healing.

Hybrida by Tina Chang

Description: In this timely, assured collection, Tina Chang confronts the complexities of raising a mixed-race child during an era of political upheaval in the United States. She ruminates on the relationship between her son’s blackness and his safety, exploring the dangers of childhood in a post–Trayvon Martin era and invoking racialized roles in fairy tales. Against the stark urban landscapes of threat and surveillance, Chang returns to the language of mothers.

Meditating on the lives of Michael Brown, Leiby Kletzky, and Noemi Álvarez Quillay―lost at the hands of individuals entrusted to protect them―Chang creates hybrid poetic forms that mirror her investigation of racial tensions. Through an agile blend of zuihitsu, ghazal, prose poems, mosaic poems, and lyric essays, Hybrida envisions a childhood of mixed race as one that is complex, emotionally wrought, and often vulnerable. Hybridais a twenty-first-century tale that is equal parts a mother’s love and her fury, an ambitious and revelatory exploration of identity that establishes Tina Chang as one of the most vital voices of her generation.

One Day I Will Save Myself by Elvira Sastre

New Poetry: One Day I Will Set Myself Free by Elvira Sastra

Description: Counting the days that pass after a devastating breakup, Elvira Sastre confronts the haunting questions that surround every failed relationship: What happened? Where did it all go wrong? How did it all fall apart? With a bold, lyrical voice poised on the knife’s edge of romance and grief, Sastre evokes the heady rush of first love and the sorrow of its painful end—even as she learns to pick up the pieces and move on after the worst has happened.

At once deeply personal and universally resonant, painful and resoundingly hopeful, One Day I Will Save Myself speaks to the poet in all of us. An intimate journey through loving, losing, and living that inspires readers to begin their own healing and is perfect for fans of Rupi Kaur, r.h. Sin, and Atticus.

Angel Bones by

Description: Angel Bones has an introspective voice that maintains a bright understanding of the temporal. As we read, we are painfully aware the speaker is dying from cancer and death is imminent. The attempt to not only explain, but understand how to welcome and embrace death is a bittersweet calm. How can one leave willingly when there is so much left behind?

Between You and These Bones by F D Soul

Description: This is rain on the roof.the freckles across your collarbone.braille.When you touch the skin by my waist and call me soft, this is what I hear.

Between You and These Bones is a collection of poetry, prose, and wisdom that acknowledges that some days just waking up is its own small victory. This book is a garden, a hymn, a forgiveness. A falling back in love. 
It is all the pieces of light you forgot you held, remembered.

Patricide by Dave Harris

Description: Dave Harris’s stellar debut takes a nuanced look at the complexities of black masculinity. Patricide weighs those complexities and how they impact a lineage of black boys who fight to become men in the image of their fathers. More than just a book about fear or death centered on being black in America, Patricide illuminates the internal struggle to be the best man possible with the shadow of other men at your back. Through poems on loss, music, college, and family strife, Harris examines how time shifts and changes, despite so much of a life’s architecture staying the same. Ultimately, Patricide opens itself up to reveal a story of many threads, one that finds a way to tie together in unexpected and joyful ways.

More Gone by Edmund Berrigan

Description: A scion of the New York School, Edmund Berrigan grew up in and around poetry. More Gone, number 18 in the Spotlight Poetry Series, is his first full-length collection in a decade, as well as the first to follow-up to his well-received memoir,  Can It! Written in a distinctive mix of New York quotidian and post-Language abstraction, More Gone documents the poet’s search for domestic tranquility amidst the city that never sleeps. Berrigan draws on a variety of materials, from songs to found language, assembling them into poems of oblique humor and wry perspective on the challenges of everyday existence. These poems aren’t anecdotes or confessions so much as objects in their own right, even as they remain rooted in a recognizable urban landscape: “Mostly, the city is begging for love, grieving, / or telling us to back the f*ck off.”

Exuberance by Dolores Hayden

Description: Daredevil pilots Lincoln Beachey, Betty Scott, Harriet Quimby, Ruth Law, Ormer Locklear, Bessie Coleman, and Clyde Pangborn fly at carnival altitudes to thrill millions of spectators who have never seen an airplane. In a lyrical sequence of persona poems, the pilots in Exuberance wonder how the experience of moving through the air will transform life on the ground. They learn to name the clouds, size up the winds, mix an Aviation Cocktail, perform a strange field landing, and make an emergency jump.

Shop This Article:

Enter