Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

I'm starting this thread but anyone can add to it. This is to discuss books you don't finish and don't feel comfortable writing a full review of but still have something to say about it.

I got both of these books because they were longlisted for the National Book Award.

[...] by Fady Joudah
I am not a fan of the title but I get it. Many of the poems have the same [...] title. Immediately upon reading I understood that the ellipsis was intended to indicate an ongoing situation and was less bothered by it. I'm not going to fault his poetry. The poems I read had some striking lines in them. My main issue is that I'm not up to reading another book with this subject matter at this time. Joudah is a Palestinian-American (and a doctor for those who like to read doctor poets) and it is the tragic Palestinian situation he is writing about. One of the early poems in the book is about the death of children. It's one of the best poems I've read of this kind. But do I want to read more? No.

The Book of Wounded Sparrows by Octavio Quintanilla
If you want to understand how the separation of immigrant children from their parents affect them, this is the book for you. You also might enjoy it if you like a book that includes images by the poet. In this book, you also get poetry that varies in the way it makes use of the space on the page. As with Joudah’s book, what was a killer for me was the subject matter. I don’t need anyone to convince me of the damage that causes. I taught English as a Second Language to teens and adults for years and have heard of all sorts of border crossing trauma. So the poet is going to have to convince me that I want to read about this subject and he doesn’t. The first half focuses on his mother. I found it a kind of confessional poetry that doesn’t appeal to me–stronger on the pathos than on poetic technique. The second section seems to focus on his father. Every now and then his talent as a poet shone through but I didn’t feel engaged enough to continue. Some of his art I liked and some did nothing for me. I didn’t find that the paintings added to the book particularly. They’re not integrated into the poetry but rather they’re in separate sections.

I hate to add another one so soon but here it is:

mother by m.s. RedCherries
RedCherries is Northern Cheyenne and this book is about the Native American experience. She makes a point of declaring at the front of the book that this is a book of characters rather than her own personal experience. None of this initially turned me off. In fact it made me optimistic and curious. But as I started to read it, it seemed like a lot of stuff I've read before. The "story," which is vague, didn't engage me. The only thing I found different from other Native lit I've read is that it is treating the 1970s as historical and there's a lot of roving in it. This is a hybrid book that goes back and forth from prose to poetry and is more prosy than poetic. It's one of those things where I've read better elsewhere on the same themes. I could see this being a worthwhile book in a Native American Lit class, but I'm not in one so I'm moving on.

And now yet another one. Clearly the National Book Awards long list, from which all of these came, did not suit me. Not even their winner, which is this one:

Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
This one is again about the subject matter and this on is again about Palestine/Gaza. I can see why this one won over [...] by Joudah. Tuffaha uses me poetic techniques in terms of space on the page and textual changes. Her poems also seem to interweave narratives/perspectives more than Joudah's. However, if I had to choose between these two, I would have chosen Joudah's book. His language was much more interesting and he had some very evocative lines. With his I regretted not wanting to read about the subject matter. With this book, I did not.

Thus far all of these are from the National Book Award long list. I doubt I'll ever read their long list again. 6 out of 10 I did not finish.

Liontaming in America by Elizabeth Willis
If you’re interested in an essay about the isolation of starting anew (think pioneering and exploration), read this book, your interest will be satisfied with something interesting that looks at this phenomenon in varied ways. But I saw very little poetry in it. It’s very expository. To me it’s creative nonfiction or a slightly creative essay. The language is not creative. The format is not creative. Even the narrative aspects of it are explaining the narrative more than providing the narrative. If I were to give this an award it would be in cultural criticism from a historical perspective. That's based on how far I got in the book. It may have made a turn toward religion, especially Mormonism, later. I would say it’s leaning toward conceptually complex but good essays are conceptually complex. Being conceptually complex is not solely, or even particularly the purview of poetry. Not at all. I’m curious to know why the author and/or publisher decided to categorize this as poetry.

It sounds like the selection process or judges for this list are totally not aligned with your taste. I’ve run into situations like that before. Maybe you’ve already been through the whole list with attempts but it sounds like it’s time to abandon ship and try a different list. I really enjoy reading through a good list - it can be a great discovery experience - so I get why you’re looking for one

Yeah, I've had a project over the past few years to read more books written in the 21st Century and I wanted to see if I jibed with any of the major awards. It's a rather expensive project so I won't be continuing it in any case. But it's been interesting. Clearly I don't get along with this year's National Book Award committee. However, I don't know if that committee changes from year to year. So next year could be different. But it IS expensive, even at kindle prices, to buy 10 books and only find one poet I'm truly interested in. Better to read anthologies, which is what I've done in the past, but I haven't found good anthologies in the 21st Century that aggregates over say 5 or 10 years the major voices of that time period. It could even be that 21st Century poetry won't be my jam and I just need to circle my wagons in the 20th Century, which had enough poetry to explore to last to the end of my lifetime.

I have Best American Poetry 2024 on my shelf, which I'm planning to read for discovery. I'll post here if it seems like a good one for that. You're totally right that one anthology is less of a financial commitment than following a whole list.

Two more:

Instructions for the Lovers by Dawn Lundy Martin
I've created a new label for this type of poetry: pretentious abstract confessionalism.

Consider the Rooster by Oliver Baez Bendorf
More than 50% of this struck me as intentionally obscure. I know it's intentional because there are poems that are fairly straight-forward and others with varying degrees of subtlety. I read almost 50% (ebook) of this book and decided to call it quits. I will give it marks for some humor and for addressing gender in some interesting ways (Bendorf is transgender).

Both of these books are on the 2024 short list of finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The winner will be announced in March 2025. I would not begrudge Consider the Rooster if it won, but I don't see how Instructions for the Lovers even made it into the final five.

Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen
In theory, this should be a book I would enjoy because there's quite a bit of science involved, archaeology, anthropology, biology. But I just didn't feel engaged with it. There was nothing especially amiss with the poetics. I wouldn't hesitate to try another book by Allen. It strikes me that if I'd encountered this book 6 months ago, before I'd begun tackling poetry prize long lists, that I'd have gotten through it. As it is, I'm reading it at the tail end of these long lists and a book really has to have something that pulls at me to keep going. This book didn't have enough pull. I'd be curious to hear what others think of this book if anyone wants to venture reading it. She's a Native American poet and I prefer her poetry to any of the younger Native poets I've read over the past few years.

All Souls by Saskia Hamilton
I'm now moving backward into the 2023 Natl Book Critics finalist list. This is another book that simply wasn't holding my interest. She does have various modes of expression. I skipped around in it a bit. One thing I'm noticing in more than one of these award books is a reliance on the thoughts of others, often quoted within the poem. In the first section of Hamilton's book, it felt like the thoughts of others was too much the substance of the poem. That's part of the reason I began reading other sections. As I mentioned, this reliance on others is not specific to Hamilton. I'm wondering if this is a result of the easy access to the thoughts of others online so that instead of deriving their own thoughts about their own direct experience, people (not just poets) are collecting and reacting to other people's thoughts and experiences. I don't know that this is good or bad or neutral. It's just an observation about what I see as different in 21st Century poetry.

Trace Evidence by Charif Shanahan
This book has the coolest cover. It looks like it's black and white stripes but there's "trace evidence" of the portrait of a man beneath them that becomes clearer when viewed from an angle. It's an appropriate cover for many reasons, which is refreshing when so many books of poetry have covers that are utterly irrelevant--however artsy they may be. I have to give Shanahan some credit too. Despite his poems having overt sexual content that I currently dislike in any poetry and all of which I believe could have been eliminated without damaging the poems, I read up to page 65 in this book before deciding to let go. I felt like he was creating a cult of being lost, which is undoubtedly unfair to him, assuming he does persistently feel this way, and, as is often the case, is more about my need for a feeling of progress than anything amiss with his poetics or project. I also think it would have been useful to readers to have arranged the poems chronologically. Sometimes he says he's 55 and others he's 35. He has an accident and then we're taking to another period (at least it seems to me) and then we're back to the trials (and truly they were trials) of attempting to heal from the accident. Are there readers for this book? I'm sure there are. Not me and in the end I don't think I'll be reading more of his work.

You seem to be on a roll this year...

No kidding. I'm hoping this will drop off steeply after March. I'll then be turning to a bunch of familiar poets: finishing Leaves of Grass, a book of Theodore Roethke, Frank O'hara, a little Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

My attempt at a Mark Halliday spree came to a swift end with his two book Jab (2002) and Thresherphobe (2013) (both on Everand).

The first poems in Jab struck me as infected by the spirit of Gertrude Stein, or perhaps Language Poetry. Either way, the disruption in grammar and sense wasn't working for me.

In both of the books, he was leaning into the past and his storytelling or reminiscences weren't engaging to me. His earlier work was very much narrating from the present, often an imagined present. His work has much more energy when he's in that mode.

Far be it from me to say a poet shouldn't experiment or move in subject matter as they move through life. But that sometimes means I only like particular phases of that poet. I'm now wondering if I'm more of a fan of Halliday's earlier work in the 20th Century. But there is a book of his from 2018 becoming available on Everand at the end of this month and I'll give him another try then.

Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon
This won the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award. I can see why it did (its complexity) but I felt it was asking too much and relying too much on the single metaphor of a bird or birds. The poetry was mildly obtuse. It felt a lot of the same thing over and over again. With this book, when I began to feel dissatisfied with it, I ranged around through the different sections to see if it was just the start that was lagging for me. No, this poetry/poet isn't for me. This was a translated work from Korea and I give the publisher credit for including some translators notes in the back--and I think an essay from the poet as well, though I don't have the book at hand at the moment.

Weirdly even when I dislike I pretty much always force myself to the end of a poetry book, though I am sure I've given up on some! Since I live in Europe there's no library of English books for me, so I have to buy them generally, which is surely part of why I don't give up, unless it's super dense or somehow offensive.
Anyway, ENOUGH ABOUT ME! laugh.
Thanks so much for your honest opinions Jen! I have taken some notes.

I think most people would say that a poetry book is so short, why not just finish it. I've just become very intolerant in my old age--at least with reading. Hopefully it doesn't expand to other areas of life.

Jen, I'm with you. I am an avid reader and always felt that I had to finish any bookbI started reading. Now, however, with far fewer years ahead than behind me, I welcome the luxury of saying " not for me" and move on to the next book on the pile. And there is always a pile!

Nina wrote: "Jen, I'm with you. I am an avid reader and always felt that I had to finish any bookbI started reading. Now, however, with far fewer years ahead than behind me, I welcome the luxury of saying " not..."

That’s me. I have too few years ahead of my to waste time on books I’m not enjoying.

Same! (in principle :) I only wish I had a public library,