I finally got my hands on Christine Kanownik’s poetry collection Head (Trembling Pillow Press). I cannot wait to read it. It just came out last month, hot-off-the-presses, and circles largely around different beheadings in myth and history (among other things). Just look at this gorgeous cover!
So incredible. Christine shares her list for May. Here it is:
Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter (I don’t understand how, with the current cultural fixations on horror, the supernatural, murder, and whatnot, Angela Carter isn’t a household name. Currently reading all her novels. She has a lot of them!)
Every Animal Is Your Mother, Ish Klein (Ish read this chapbook length poem at my book launch and I died. Beautiful edition by Factory Hollow with art by Bianca Stone.)
The Fact of the Doorframe, Adrienne Rich (Essential. Everything she wrote is so true and essential.)
Two Hunters, Marina Blitshteyn (Really, really excited to read this one!)
THE END, MC Hyland (ditto! MC is the best.)
The Penguin Book of Hell, ed. by Scott G. Bruce (Working my way through this before bed. Lots of Virgil and Homer and Biblical texts with almost zero outside of the cannon so I don’t know if I can recommend. I do love reading those really weird apocryphal books of the Bible though. )
The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (I can’t say enough about how reading this collection has helped in the past few years.)
30 Fake Beheadings, Gary J. Shipley (When someone writes a book about decapitation, I’m all over it.)
Surge, Etel Adnan (May she live forever.)
Screwball, Anne Kawala, trans. Kit Schluter (Really intrigued by the description of this one. An experimental epic novel? Following a huntress-gatheress on her world travels? Sign me up!!)
The Desert, Brandon Shimoda (Song Cave and Shimonda haven’t let me down yet.)
Love Three, Aaron Kunin (You never really know what to expect when you pick up a new book by Kunin and I really, really appreciate that.)
The Vagabond, Colette (Colette dressed as a cat is my spirit animal.)
American Genius, A Comedy, Lynne Tillman (A real National Treasure. I can’t wait for President Warren to give her the Presidential Medal of Honor.)
As for me, so many books read!—yet so many many more books await. If you look closely, you can see the screw pulling away from the wall on this shelf. Eep.
– NEWIES –
Good Stock Strange Blood, Dawn Lundy Martin
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, Terrance Hayes
Keeping/The Window Open, Rosemarie and Keith Waldrop
Woods and Clouds Interchangeable, Michael Earl Craig
Hear Trains, Caroline Knox
The Tiniest Muzzle Sings Songs of Freedom, Magdalena Zurawski
Extratransmission, Andrea Abi-Karam
Head, Christine Kanownik (HOORAY)
Book of Scab, Danielle Pafunda
On the Mezzanine, Carrie Donish
Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado
Rob’s Word Shop, Robert Fitterman
The Interface for a Fractal Landscape, Ed Steck
Motion Studies, Jena Osman
The Winter Garden Photograph, Reina María Rodríguez (trans. Kristin Dykstra)
Lost Horizon, Nathaniel Farrell
Awe, Mac Wellman
– OLDIES –
Conference of the Birds, Farid Ud-din Attar; Known and Strange Things, Teju Cole; Severance, Ling Ma; Magical Negro, Morgan Parker; The Collected Schizophrenias, Esmé Weijun Wang; Experiments in Joy, Gabrielle Civil; Roll Deep, Major Jackson; Chateau Wichman, Ben Pease; Dissolve, Sherwin Bitsui; The Beekeeper, Dunya Mikhail; The Lice, W.S. Merwin; The White Card, Claudia Rankine; Potted Meat, Steven Dunn; The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde; Joy Enough, Sarah McColl; Why I’m Sad, Dorothea Lasky; Autobiography of Death, Kim Hyesoon; Monsters I Have Been, Kenji C. Liu; Deaf Republic, Ilya Kaminsky; Landscape with Sex and Violence, Lynn Melnick; Some Animal, Ely Shipley; Eleanor, or, the Rejection of the Progress of Love, Anna Moschovakis; Home Remedies, Xuan Juliana Wang; The Line Becomes a River, Francisco Cantú; Indecency, Justin Phillip Reed; Austerity, Marion Bell; The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison; Orient, Nicholas Gulig; Green-Wood, Allison Cobb
