2020 Poetry Revisited
This list of notable poetry books published in 2020 was selected by a librarian at The Seattle Public Library. (Created Dec. 2020)
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Words Like Thunder
Presented as an interconnected sequence of "new and used Anishinaabe prayers," Beardslee's timely debut places age-old poetic traditions in dialogue with contemporary ones. -- Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
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13th Balloon
The achingly beautiful fourth collection from Bibbins (They Don't Kill You Because They're Hungry, They Kill You Because They're Full) is a book-length elegy to a lover who died of AIDS-related complications in 1992. -- Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
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All Heathens
Chan’s skillful debut is a lustrous collage of first-person, persona, and epistle poems populated with Filipino holiday reenactments, Catholic saints, karaoke, a chorus of family members, and the dead who insist on return and whose memory drives the speaker to seek a world beyond the colonialist history of her home country. -- Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
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Obit
In her fifth collection, Guggenheim Fellowship winner Chang (The Boss) uses an unusual subject--obituaries--to shed light on what qualities make for a good life as well as a passable death. -- Library Journal
Format: Book
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Wicked Enchantment
“Wicked Enchantment,” which selects poems from the books Coleman published with Black Sparrow Press between 1979 and 2001, provides a fantastically entertaining and deeply engaging introduction to a poet whose talent and significance were not fully appreciated during her lifetime. -- The Washington Post
Format: Book
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Guillotine
In his latest, corruscatingly brilliant collection, Yale Younger Poet Corral (Slow Lightning) communicates a sense of loss and betrayal along the Mexican-American border in a multivoiced narrative that becomes a single story, a single low wail. -- Library Journal
Format: Book
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Cardinal
Throughout, Daye investigates where Black people can find safety in a racist America, while memorably cataloguing each area’s complexities and rewards in quiet, nuanced meditations. -- Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
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Postcolonial Love Poem
In this exquisite, electrifying collection, Diaz (When My Brother Was an Aztec) studies the body through desire and the preservation of Native American lives and cultures, suggesting that to exist as a Native in a world with a history of colonization and genocide is itself a form of protest and celebration. -- Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
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Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry
National Book Award--winner Finney (Head Off & Split) returns with her first collection in a decade, artfully interweaving memories from her life with episodes from throughout black history. -- Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
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Be Holding
Shaped as a single poem in a long sentence of center-justified couplets, the drama of this unfolding sentence is impeccable, a suspension that mirrors its subject: basketball Hall-of-Famer Julius Erving’s midair “baseline scoop” in the 1980 NBA finals. -- Publishers Weekly
Format: Book
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