“I will call you man / man man man man / it is a recipe / it is not expensive” – Heather Christle, “YOU ARE MY GUEST”
I somewhat want to back up last year’s claim that women are the best short story writers. But I wanna include poetry. Okay, let’s go.
Just gonna look at the shelf! No rankings here! Books!
THE TREES THE TREES by Heather Christle
As I said when I read this one, it took me forever to get my hands on, and boy it was worth the wait. Such a wholly unique mind behind these poems. Every page is an adventure to a room you weren’t sure was allowed.
THE COLOR MASTER by Aimee Bender
I recommend Willful Creatures as one of my favorite books ever, but still, no list is complete without Aimee Bender. Especially if you’re gonna talk about short stories. Even if she has a recognizable style and focus at this point, she has by no means gotten boring, or resorted to playing the hits. Each new book surprises and delights in its own way.
GIRL’S GUIDE TO LEAVING by Laura Villareal
There are debut collections, and then there are debut collections, this is the latter. I’m definitely due for a re-read on this one. Laura is really inventive with use of white space and caesura, often a quick way to my heart. Actually, when it’s done poorly, I get kinda irritated, but when it’s done like this? It’s thrilling. What’s the difference? Unfortunately, all I got is I know it when I see it.
THE BEAN EATERS by Gwendolyn Brooks
Yeah I’m doing another Gwendolyn Brooks rec after putting her on the Black poets list and Chicago authors list, what of it?
99 STORIES OF GOD by Joy Williams
Before reading this book, I’d read two Lydia Davis books, plus three or four anthologies of flash fiction. This was the first collection of flash fiction to really, genuinely, hold my attention from cover to cover. These stories are unbelievable.
LESSER KNOWN MONSTERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY by Kim Fu
I am jaded about collections of long stories. I’ve said this before, but for whatever reason, they don’t excite me as much as novels and poetry collections. Maybe I feel compelled to read each story in one sitting, and that’s pressure? Anyway, this book shattered that cynicism. These stories pull you in emotionally, and the writing is so so smooth. It is not a horror collection, I should clarify, but it’s not not a horror collection. One or two of Kim’s novels are on my list to pick up at AWP.
METEORIC FLOWERS by Elizabeth Willis
Physically, what I believe a book of poems should be. It and the poems are tight, compact, and gorgeous in a not-immediately-obvious way. Elizabeth Willis is great.
TOSKA by Alina Pleskova
I feel like I talk about this book a lot. Suffice to say that not only are the poems great, but that this book embodies a kind of humanity-forward leftism that I wish to inhabit as well.
AISLE 228 by Sandra Marchetti
Baseball poems! Sandy is another poet who knows how to keep a collection tight. There’s family here, and nostalgia, and baseball, and Steve Bartman, and the 2016 World Series. Greg Maddux and Kerry Wood are here. These poems are as full of aching and longing as you’d expect any collection written by a Cubs fan to be, but it’s never treacly or sentimental. Love this collection.
SHORT TALKS by Anne Carson
I love those books, when someone who occupies that rarified intellectual space just pulls back and writes a bunch of excellent poems. Percival Everett has a book of sonnets, Anne Carson kicked her career off with this genre-bending book of prose poems. You can actually read these as “talks,” and it’s real fun to imagine how the TEDTalks audience would react to you reading some of these out loud.
LOVE IN INFANT MONKEYS by Lydia Millet
Gotta be honest. I read this sometime around 2014-2016, when my reading attention span was starting to slip but I didn’t realize it. It was my first Lydia Millet, and I really loved it, and I’ve loved the other two Millet books I’ve read. She has that breezy Percival Everett quality, where each sentence is exactly right. Not in a “my god, so stunning” way, but in a warm blanket kind of way. It still sits on my shelf, and I am excited for the day I get to explore it again.
As with all book lists, I left some really, really great stuff off, and learned that my shelf could use more women. I mean, there are lots of women poets on my shelves. I’m just saying, there could literally always be more.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris