There’s usually poetry lying around my bed, but not read systematically. These are the key poetry books that passed through 2015, presented without much commentary, listed with what I most needed at the top.
Landscape with Rowers: Poetry from the Netherlands, ed. J.M Coetzee (Princeton University Press, 2005)
Fantastic collection of 20th century Dutch poetry, dual-language edition. (I couldn’t have named a single Dutch poet before this.) Sybren Polet’s anti-war “Self-Repeating Poem” was a stand-out.
La parti pris des choses (Gallimard, first published 1942) – Francis Ponge
Prose poems I always return to. The role of THINGS in our life, imagination. I especially love “Notes on a Shell”.
Nest (Kelsey Street Press, 2003) – Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge
Prose fragments, like listening to someone thinking out loud.
Ghosts! (Spuyten Duyvil, 2011) – Martine Bellen
An example of why I need poetry, although (or because) I don’t understand it. The pursuit of mystery.
Black Life (Wave Books, 2010) – Dorothea Lasky
Dottie Lasky is a witch/seer of the 21st century. (I aspire to this sort of witchdom.)