#poetry rec list

[solipseismic]

2022 poetry rec list

wrapping up this year w another poetry rec list! this year i’ve leaned a lot more into actively reading and writing much more poetry and hope to be publishing a compilation of my work (hopefully!) this time next year as well :) once again, i’ve tried to link what i could back to original sources + authors but a few of these link to tumblr posts / screenshots. this one is MUCH longer so i’ve organized it into my fav 15 + the rest below the cut!

top fifteen:

desert hymns no.2 (@/prophetfromthecrypt)

despite my efforts even my prayers have turned into threats (kaveh akbar)

erishkigal specializes in butchery (joan tierney)

for the dogs who barked at me on the sidewalks in connecticut (hanif abdurraqib)

fricatives (eric yip)

hammond b3 organ cistern (gabrielle calvocoressi)

let your father die energy drink (daniel lavery)

morning prayer with rat king (kaveh akbar)

not even this (ocean vuong)

on coming back as a buzzard (lia purpura)

the swan (@/tinyghosthands)

sometimes i wish i felt the side effects (danez smith)

song of the insensible (andrew kozma)

space boy wearing skirt (lee jenny)

the stars are warm (chung ho-seung)

everyone else:

14 lines from love letters or suicide notes (doc luben)

blood makes the blade holy (evan knoll)

border patrol agent (eduardo c corral)

carpet bomb (kenyatta rogers)

death comes to me again, a girl (dorianne laux)

desert (john gould fletcher)

do you consider writing to be therapeutic? (andrew grace)

dust (dorianne laux)

first will and testament + missing persons (sam sax)

fish (richelle buccilli)

for the feral splendor that remains (caconrad)

glitter (keaton st james)

gravedigger (andrew thomas huang)

heart condition (jericho brown)

it is maybe time to admit that michael jordan definitely pushed off (hanif abdurraqib)

leaves (lloyd schwartz)

letter to s, hospital (emily skaja)

metaphors for my body on the examination table (torrin a greathouse)

miss you. would like to grab that chilled tofu we love (gabrielle calvocoressi)

my brother, asleep (steven espada dawson)

my brother out of rehab, points, (ron riekki)

my cat is sad (spencer madsen)

notes from jonah's lecture series (tanya olsen)

publick universal friend contends with orthgraphy & meditates in an emergency (day heisinger-nixon)

red stains (allen tate)

red shift (david baker)

salvage (hedgie choi)

shoulders (naomi shihab nye)

social skills training (solmaz sharif)

the 17-year-old & the gay bar (danez smith)

the desert dispels this hallowed ground of coarse insinuations (julia wong kcomt)

the twelfth day (rosanna warren)

two-mom energy drink (daniel lavery)

two poems (rachel nelson)

two times i loved you the most in a car (dorothea grossman)

un [naming] / trans (after golden) (angelic proof)

valentine for ernest mann (naomi shihab nye)

vi. wisdom: the voice of god (mary karr) 

WAITING (keaton st james)

what mary magdalene said to the young transsexual (elle emerson)

wild geese (mary oliver)

worms (shyla hardwick)

[kvothes]

louise glück was an tremendous poet in her own life and also taught, advised, and nurtured uncountable other poets. her picking richard siken’s crush for the yale younger poets prize is a well known fact, but she selected a number of other poets for publication during her tenure as the contest judge that i think are worth knowing.

peter streckfus, cuckoo (2003)

richard siken, crush (2004)

jay hopler, green squall (2005)

jessica fisher, frail-craft (2006)

fady joudah, the earth in the attic (2007)

arda collins, it is daylight (2008)

ken chen, juvenilia (2009)

katherine larson, radial symmetry (2010)

poetry is a community! read her—and also read the poets she wanted to promote.

[typewriter-worries]

It's world poetry day so here are some (more) of my favorite poems:

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade by Brad Aaron Modlin

All Trains Are Going Local by Timothy Liu

Rural Boys Watch the Apocalypse by Keaton St. James (@boykeats)

HOPE YOU’RE WELL. PLEASE DON’T READ THIS. by Lev St. Valentine (@dogrotpdf)

Time of Love by Claribel Alegría

Every Job Has a First Day by Rebecca Gayle Howell

ALL THAT WANTING, RIGHT? by Devin Kelly

Reading by A.R. Ammons

things i want to ask you by Helga Floros

Night Bird by Danusha Laméris

Prayer for Werewolves by Stephanie Burt

The Two Times I Loved You the Most In a Car by Dorothea Grossman

The Yearner by Rachel Long

If I Had Three Lives by Sarah Russell

I Dream on a Crowded Subway Train with My Eyes Open But My Body Swaying by Chen Chen

We Have Not Long to Love by Tennessee Williams

Jesus at the Gay Bar by Jay Hulme

Cracks by Dieu Dinh

and here's part one <3

[sweatermuppet]

which poems collections/poets do you recommend for people who start reading poetry?

download the PDF here for free

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

Read Palestine Week

🇵🇸 Good morning, my beautiful bookish bats. Can I start by saying a huge THANK YOU for sharing my Queer Palestinian Book post? Seriously, thank you so much. Let's keep that momentum by observing Read Palestine Week (Nov 29 - Dec 5). I've compiled a list of books to help you, along with a list of upcoming events and resources you can use this week and beyond.

🇵🇸 A collective of over 350 global publishers and individuals issued a public statement expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Publishers for Palestine have organized an international #ReadPalestine week, starting today (International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People).

🇵🇸 These publishers have made many resources and e-books available for free (with more to come). A few include award-winning fiction and poetry by Palestinian and Palestinian diaspora authors. You'll also find non-fiction books about Palestinian history, politics, arts, culture, and “books about organizing, resistance, and solidarity for a Free Palestine.” You can visit publishersforpalestine.org to download some of the books they have available.

POETRY 🌙 Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha 🌙 Affiliation by Mira Mattar 🌙 Enemy of the Sun by Samih al-Qasim 🌙 I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti 🌙 A Mountainous Journey by Fadwa Tuqan 🌙 So What by Taha Muhammad Ali 🌙 The Butterfly’s Burden by Mahmoud Darwish 🌙 To All the Yellow Flowers by Raya Tuffaha

FICTION 🌙 Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury 🌙 Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales 🌙 Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani 🌙 Morning in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa 🌙 Gaze Writes Back by Young Writers in Gaze 🌙 Palestine +100:Stories from a Century after the Nakba 🌙 Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh 🌙 Out of Time by Samira Azzam

🌙 The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher 🌙 You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat 🌙 A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum 🌙 Salt Houses by Hala Alyan 🌙 A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar 🌙 Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa 🌙 Minor Detail by Adania Shibli 🌙 The Woman From Tantoura by Radwa Ashour

NON-FICTION 🌙 Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour 🌙 Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine by Raja Shehadeh 🌙 Palestinian Art, 1850–2005 by Kamal Boullata 🌙 Palestine by Joe Sacco 🌙 The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian’s Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker by Sami Al Jundi & Jen Marlowe 🌙 Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha 🌙 Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat 🌙 The Words of My Father: Love and Pain in Palestine by Yousef Khalil Bashir

🌙 Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution by Hanan Karaman Munayyer 🌙 Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture by Salim Tamari 🌙 This Is Not a Border: Reportage and Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature 🌙 We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir, by Raja Shehadeh 🌙 Les échos de la mémoire. Une enfance palestinienne à Jérusalem, by Issa J. Boullata 🌙 A Party For Thaera: Palestinian Women Write Life In Prison 🌙 Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, 🌙 Voices of the Nakba: A Living History of Palestine

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of january

christian wiman hard night: "the ice storm"

timothy donnelly hymn to life

randall jarrell the complete poems: "the lost world"

dana levin the living teaching

stuart dybeck brass knuckles: "the knife-sharpener's daughter"

kofi awoonor the promise of hope: new and selected poems: "lament of the silent sisters"

bruce snider ode to a dolly parton drag queen

jon pineda birthmark: "translation"

brenda shaughnessy interior with sudden joy: "dear gonglya"

franny choi hangul abecedarian

atsuro riley hutch

clark moore strikes and gutters

jenny xie eye level: "rootless"

alberto ríos the smallest muscle in the human body: "rabbits and fire"

tim seibles mosaic

anthony hecht an offering for patricia

harry matthews cool gales shall fan the glades

robert glück the word in us: lesbian and gay poetry of the next wave: "burroughs"

albert goldbarth the poem of the little house at the corner of misapprehension and marvel

george seferis collected poems (george seferis): "spring a.d."

alberto ríos a small story about the sky

sharmila voorakkara for the tattooed man

robin blaser the holy forest: collected poems of robin blaser: "the truth is laughter 10"

robert pinsky gulf music: "antique"

henri cole blackbird and wolf: "twilight"

paul violi likewise: "in praise of idleness"

ron padgett collected poems: "what are you on?"

meena alexander birthplace with buried stones: "lychees"

sara borjas decolonial self-portrait

valerie martínez absence, luminescent: "the reliquaries"

kathryn simmonds the visitations: "in the woods"

kofi

[stuckinapril]

Do you have any poetry recommendations? The poem poll made me realize that I like. ONLY know Iraqi poets. Like the only non-Iraqi poet I can name off the top of my head is Robert Frost

i'm literally hooked on poetry. even on days where i can't sit down to read a book, i try to consume at least one poem a day bc it keeps me sane. it actually does. i recommend signing up to one poem a day newsletters--those have been a game changer for me. as for recommendations, my favorite poems change every week, but current faves (whose authors i regularly go back to/are a good starting point) would be:

elegy for my sadness - chen chen (Who invented the word / “ennui”? A sad Frenchman? / A centipede? They should’ve never / been born. They should’ve seen me / in Paris, a sad teenage / exchange student. I was so sad / & so teenaged, one day my host sister / gripped my hand hard & even harder / said, SOIS HEUREUX. / BE HAPPY. & miraculously, / I wasn’t sad anymore. / All I felt was the desire to slap my host sister. / See, I was angry in Paris, which is clearly / not allowed. One can be sad in Paris (I was) / & one can be in love in Paris (I was not), / but angry? Angry in Paris?")

a pity, we were such a good invention - yehuda amichal ( "A pity / We were such a good / And loving invention / An aeroplane made from a man and wife / Wings and everything / We hovered a little above the earth")

like a small cafe, that's love - mahmoud darwish ("I say to myself at last / Perhaps she who I was waiting for / was waiting for me, or was waiting for some other man / or was waiting for us, and did not find him/me.")

bible study - tony hoagland ("Who knows, this might be the last good night of summer / My broken nose is forming an idea of what’s for supper / Hard to believe that death is just around the corner / What kind of idiot would think he even had a destiny?")

mother and child - louise gluck ("Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant? / Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us; / it is your turn to address it, to go back asking / what am I for? What am I for?")

america, america - saadi youssef ("We are not hostages, America, / and your soldiers are not God's soldiers... / We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods, / the gods of bulls, / the gods of fires, / the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and blood in a song... / We are the poor, ours is the god of the poor, / who emerges out of farmers' ribs, / hungry / and bright, / and raises heads up high...")

the duino elegies (seventh elegy respectively) - rainer maria rilke ("Not only the devotion of these unfolded forces, / not only the paths, not only the evening fields, / not only, after a late storm, the breathing freshness, / not only approaching sleep and a premonition, evenings... / also the nights! Also the high summer nights / also the stars, the stars of this Earth! / O to be dead at last and know them eternally, / all the stars: for how, how, how to forget them!")

the endlessness - ada limon ("How was i supposed to feel then? About moving in the world? How could I touch anything or anyone without the weight of all of time shifting through us?")

psalm - adonis ("Open my memory and study my face beneath its words, learn my alphabet. When you see foam weaving my flesh and stone flowing in my blood, you will see me. I am closed like a tree trunk, present and ungraspable like air. Thus I cannot surrender to you.")

the war works hard - dunya mikhail ("The war continues working, / day and night. / It inspires tyrants / to deliver long speeches / awards medals to generals / and themes to poets / it contributes/ to the industry / of artificial limbs / provides food for flies / adds pages to the history books / achieves equality / between killer and killed / teaches lovers to write letters / accustoms young women to waiting / fills the newspapers / with articles and pictures / builds new houses / for the orphans / invigorates the coffin makers / gives grave diggers / a pat on the back / and paints a smile on the leader's face.")

[fixing-bad-posts]

Have you ever read the poems of Nakahara Chuuya? I think they’re incredible, 10/10 recommend

i have not! i'll add him to my reading list :) thanks for the rec!

[poppletonink]

Poetry 101: The Best Poems To Start Your Journey Into The Land Of Verse

Ozymandias by Percy Shelley

Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

If by Rudyard Kipling

The Lady Of Shallot by Alfred Lord Tennyson

O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman

In Flanders Fields by John McCrae

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

She Walks In Beauty by Lord Byron

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

The Tyger by William Blake

O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Porphyrias' Lover by Robert Browning

[belle-keys]

Biographical movies and dramas about writers:

Tolkien (2019) - about JRR Tolkien

The Edge of Love (2008) - about Dylan Thomas

Set Fire to the Stars (2014) - about Dylan Thomas

Colette (2018) - about Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

Wilde (1997) - about Oscar Wilde

The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) - about Oscar Wilde

My Salinger Year (2020) - about JD Salinger

Rebel in the Rye (2017) - about JD Salinger

Mary Shelley (2017) - about Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Gothic (1986) - about Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Shakespeare in Love (1998) - about William Shakespeare

Sylvia (2003) - about Sylvia Plath

Dickinson (2019-2021) - about Emily Dickinson

A Quiet Passion (2016) - about Emily Dickinson

Vita & Virginia (2019) - about Virginia Woolf

Becoming Jane (2008) - about Jane Austen

Miss Austen Regrets (2007) - about Jane Austen

Kafka (1991) - about Franz Kafka

Byron (2003) - about Lord Byron

Total Eclipse (1995) - about Paul Verlaine

Capote (2005) - about Truman Capote

Rowing with the Wind (1988) - about the Romantic Poets

Infamous (2006) - about Truman Capote

Quills (2000) - about Marquis de Sade

Neruda (2016) - about Pablo Neruda

Juana Inés (2016) - about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Daphne (2007) - about Daphne du Maurier

Priest of Love (1981) - about DH Lawrence

Little Ashes (2008) - about Federico Garcia Lorca

Lope (2010) - about Lope de Vega

Howl (2010) - about Allen Ginsberg

The Last Station (2009) - about Leo Tolstoy

Young Goethe in Love (2010) - about Johann Goethe

Tom & Viv (1994) - about T.S. Eliot

Céleste (1980) - about Marcel Proust

Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012) - about Ernest Hemingway

Balzac: A Life of Passion (1999) - about Honore de Balzac

The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017) - about Charles Dickens

Shirley (2020) - about Shirley Jackson

Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017) - about Alan Alexander Milne

Heart Beat (1980) - about Jack Kerouac

In the Heart of the Sea (2015) - about Herman Melville

Notes: Not all of the films on this non-exhaustive list are entirely “about” the lives of their respective writers to a tee. I cannot vouch for the accuracy or quality of all of these movies. I’ve only seen about 75% of these films personally. And yes, I know this list is very Westernized – I’m working on it.

[words-and-coffee]

So this last year, though I didn't read too much fiction, I read a lot of poetry, most of which was from poets I had never read before. Here are my favourite poetry books of those I read in 2023 (trigger warnings I noticed in the read more).

Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón (5/5) An intimate, beautifully sincere look into a vulnerable space of life, loss, love, and lust. Limón expresses herself with exquisite language, without the aftertaste of pretence. I had never read Limón's work previously, but I will be looking at her back catalogue.

C+nto & Othered Poems by Joelle Taylor (4.5/5) I had never read Joelle Taylor before; however, it became evident almost immediately that she is an extremely skilled and experienced poet and wordsmith. Taylor's writing is intentional and powerful, with times of both great beauty and brutality. The collection itself is centred around reflecting on butch counterculture.

Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised by Alice Te Punga Somerville (4.5/5) Always Italicised is a wonderful collection centred around a visually powerful concept of italicising foreign (non-native) words following the suggestion that foreign (non-English) words should be italicised in a fantastic act of malicious compliance. The primary focus is on colonisation and Te Punga Somerville's experience as a Māori writer and scholar in Aotearoa. Reflecting on the loss of language, the stigma and the historical oppression that Maori people have experienced/continue to experience as a consequence of colonisation.

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On by Franny Choi (4.5/5) This book has my favourite title of the year and the poetry lives up to it. My previous experience with Choi was in her spoken word work and I found this collection just as enjoyable, I listened to her narration on audiobook while reading along and found the poems to be beautifully reflective, personal, and rich in atmosphere.

Flèche by Mary Jean Chan (4/5) Chan's short collection is complex and interesting, she mainly reflects on her relationship with her mother, and her experiences as a queer person of colour. The collection feels raw in a beautiful and occasionally painful way.

The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang (4/5) Another banger of a title. I really loved the imagery in Chang's writing. She writes with intent and skill which is obvious from the get-go. While I struggled to connect with this collection on an emotional level I still was in awe of it on a technical level.

Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón Graphic: Grief, Death, Death of parent, and Terminal illness Moderate: Animal death, Racial slurs, Xenophobia, and Racism Minor: Alcoholism and Drug abuse

C+nto & Othered Poems by Joelle Taylor Graphic: Hate crime, Death, Lesbophobia, Homophobia, and Violence Moderate: Misogyny, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised by Alice Te Punga Somerville Graphic: Colonisation Moderate: Racism Minor: Miscarriage

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On by Franny Choi Graphic: Death, Xenophobia, War, Racism, Violence, Grief, Police brutality, Sexual assault, and Colonisation Moderate: Sexual violence, Sexism, Suicide, Rape, and Police brutality

Flèche by Mary Jean Chan Graphic: Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Racism Moderate: Mental illness and Self harm

The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang Moderate: Death

[solipseismic]

2023 poetry rec list

technically a day late but who cares! i don't. it's gonna be a long one this year too despite not having read or written as much poetry as of late; i'm putting my overall fifteen favorite + poetry book recs up here and the rest below a cut to spare your dashboards :)

2022

2021

books:

calling a wolf a wolf (kaveh akbar)

cinema of the present (lisa robertson)

dictee (theresa hak kyung cha)

pilgrim bell (kaveh akbar)

prelude to bruise (saeed jones)

the crown ain't worth much (hanif abdurraqib)

top 15:

abecedarian requiring further examination of anglikan seraphym subjugation of a wild indian reservation (natalie diaz)

about eight minutes of light (robert king)

at luca signorelli's resurrection of the body (jorie graham)

ginen the micronesian kingfisher [i sihek] (craig santos perez)

gods, gods, powers, lord, universe-- (chen chen)

kupu rere kē (alice te punga somerville)

look (solmaz sharif)

ode to the 9,000 year old woman (@/goodbyevitamin)

one art (elizabeth bishop)

petitioning the patron saint of childbirth (danielle boodoo-fortuné)

so mexicans are taking jobs from americans (jimmy santiago baca)

the death loop (jon lovett)

the difficult miracle of black poetry in america: something like a sonnet for phillis wheatley (june jordan)

the madwoman as rasta medusa (shara mccallum)

vocabulary (safia elhillo)

& the gun echoed for centuries; interlude with drug of course; & the light devours us all (yasmin belkhyr)

a brother named gethsemane (natalie diaz)

a map to the next world (joy harjo)

between autumn equinox and winter solstice, today (emily jungmin yoon)

cherish this ecstasy (david james duncan)

coffins (derick thomson)

conflict resolution for holy beings (joy harjo)

failing and flying (jack gilbert)

ginen tidelands [latte stone park] [hagåtña, guåhan] (craig santos perez)

how to be a dog (andrew kane)

i love you to the moon & (chen chen)

i'm sorry birds (@/quezify)

insomnia and the seven steps to grace (joy harjo)

i was sleeping where the black oaks move (louise erdrich)

i watch her eat the apple (natalie diaz)

moth wings and other things (@/grendel-menz)

my father (ollie schminkey)

my soldier, my stranger (scherezade siobhan)

new year's day (joan tierney)

october (louise glück)

praise song for oceania (craig santos perez)

praise the rain (joy harjo)

real estate (richard siken)

sharing a cigarette with joan of arc (dante emile)

song of the anti-sisyphus (chen chen)

table (edip cansever, transl. richard tillinghast)

tear it down (jack gilbert)

temporary job (minnie bruce pratt)

the blue dress (saeed jones)

the lesson of the moth (don marquis)

the universe, as in one last song for the lonely hearts (michelle hulan)

throwing children (ross gay)

untitled (joan tierney)

voices (naomi shihab nye)

when i die i want your hands on my eyes (pablo neruda)

why i am not coming in to work today (jess zimmerman)

wolf moon (nina maclaughlin)

yes, it was the mountain echo (william wordsworth)

[a--ttano]

A small tiny rec list of media abt places (living):

I am in eskew (podcast)

Invisible cities (book, italo calvino)

The city & the city (book, China mieville)

Uzumaki (manga, junji Ito)

The nameless city (short story, HP Lovecraft)

Dishonored (video game)

Bloodborne (video game)

Piranesi (book, Susanna Clarke)

The haunting of Hill house (book, Shirley Jackson)

Pls feel free to add more!

[cherryblossomshadow]

This summary is factually incorrect, but I saw this post and I just wanted to make a silly, low-effort meme about one of my favorite witcher fic universes. And now I'm off to go reread my favorite installments

The OG: With a Conquering Air by inexplicifics (@inexplicifics)

And an incredible Geralt POV remix: For the Asking by gremble (@abeautifulblog)

[girlfictions]

ooo i've been wanting to get into poetry. do have any suggestions

in no particular order here are some of my favourite poetry collections 🤍

coeur de lion — ariana reines

radial symmetry — katherine larson

bless the daughter raised by a voice in her head — warsan shire

the wild iris — louise glück

autopsy — donte collins

postcolonial love poem — natalie diaz

unfortunately, it was paradise — mahmoud darwish

devotions — mary oliver

the world's wife — carol ann duffy

hard damage — aria aber

night sky with exit wounds — ocean vuong

mothman apologia — robert wood lynn

love & misadventure — lang leav

if my body could speak — blythe baird

the beauty of the husband — anne carson

two cures for love — wendy cope

[marbleheavy]

Books That Rocked My Shit and Should Be Added to Your 2024 TBR

i love love talking about the books i’ve read and as the year approaches it’s close, here is a list, in no particular order, of books that really did numbers on me and should be added to a new year tbr!! it’s a mix of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction/memoir

1. Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History RF Kuang

Robin Swift, a Cantonese orphan, is adopted by an Oxford professor and trained for years in linguistics and languages so he can become a student at Oxford University at the Royal Institute of Translation (Babel). Babel handles all of the British empires linguistic concerns and, most importantly, it’s magic. Silver bars are inscribed with words that mean the same thing in different languages and the meaning lost between the translation enchants the bad. At Babel, Robin befriends his class, three other non-traditional Oxford students, and starts to see how Babel is used to serve the empire. He gets involved with the Hermes society, an anti-imperialist secret society, and gets caught between them and Babel as Britain declares war on China.

You know this book was gonna be on this list. It’s actually kind of cheating because I read it for the first time last year but I did a reread this September and my god, it’s so stellar. It’s a very fresh concept that revolves around the classical and the tension between those two is just delicious. My post structuralist heart that believes our world is composed of language was just beating out of my chest this entire book. Oh!! And don’t even get my started on the alternate/sub/second title!!!!

2. Why Religion? by Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels is a scholar of religion who has done extensive research into early Christianity and Gnosticism, and is known for her involvement and study with the Nag Hammadi documents, a collection of texts discovered that are thought to be early Christian and gnostic gospels. Using her robust academic background, Pagels explores her personal relationship to religion through a series of essays in this memoir-esque book. She writes about her time being religions and non-religious as well as the profound hardship and grief that she experienced throughout her life that led her to ask “Why religion?” and find her own answer.

This book is phenomenal. I was introduced to it in a religion course I took this semester and it has fundamentally changed my relationship to religion, even as someone who considered themself to be more or less an atheist. Pagels’ writing is intelligent and poignant but not difficult to understand. This isn’t a scholarly work and I would call it more of a rumination than an argument. The main note I have for potential readers is that it is very Christo-centric and also doesn’t spend much time with biblical canon, but considering this is a memoir and not an attempt to rationalize religion for anyone other than Pagels herself, I was not put off by it.

3. Bad Fruit by Ella King

Chronicling Lily’s life after graduating high school and starting at Oxford, the book revolves around her relationship with her mother. Her mother, from Singapore and with a troubled past that Lily begins to understand, becomes increasingly erratic and unhinged. As she does, Lily follows in her footsteps as she seeks to appease her mother while also trying to break free from her control. The central mage in the book is a cup of spoilt orange juice that Lily always tastes first to make sure it’s right for her mother.

First off, fruit. You know I’m always down bad for a book with fruit is the main motif! This is such a fantastic book exploring mother-daughter relationships, inherited trauma, and cyclical abuse. It’s devastating but never heavy handed and the writing is really fantastic. I think about this book all the time and how every character is so well written and so intensely fallible but never denied humanity.

4. She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

A fictionalized retelling of the Hongwu Emperor, the story follows a young girl who assumes the identity of her brother, Zhu Chongba, after he dies. The original Zhu was promised greatness and in the wake of his death and to survive alone, the new (and perhaps real) Zhu joins a monastery. The story is set during Red Turban Rebellions against the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty and after many years at the monastery, Zhu joins the Red Turbans and rises among the ranks all while she attempts to conceal her deception. The story also follows General Ouyang, a Mongolia general, as he struggles with his own status among the Mongols and his hatred for Zhu. The book follows the interpersonal struggles of the characters while the overarching war between the Red Turbans and the Mongols rages on and, often, intersects with the personal.

I read this book in two days and was just beside myself. My synopsis can’t even begin to cover the complexities of this book, it is trusty one of my favorites I’ve ever read. It is SO good. There were moments where I was left gaping at the page, I was so enthralled!! I’ve heard some people didn’t vibe with the pacing of the book because it spans so many years, but I read it’s o quickly that it wasn’t an issue for me. The way that gender and sexuality are handled in this book was so well done and very much a reminder that queerness and the experiences that come with it aren’t always able to be articulated, especially by contemporary language and labels. And the parallels between characters!! Zhu and Ouyang!!! I really don’t think anything I can say can do this book justice because it’s just fab. Really spectacular!!

5. Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón

Ada Limón is the current poet laureate of the United States and this is an earlier collection of hers. This poetry collection explores identity, place, and loss with an overarching feminist oomph. The books is in four sections, each embodying a different experience or theme but all interconnected. Limón’s writing is clear and vivid and her command of language is incredible.

This collection is fabulous! Although not my usual pick, Limón’s style radiates off the page and her skill is so obvious in every poem. She is so aware of space in all her poems and every word is picked with precision. Even in the moments of loss and grief that Limón writes about, her optimism is tangible and infectious. “How to Triumph Like a Girl” is one of my favorite poems ever and seeing it in context with the rest of the collection gives it so much more life. If you’re new to poetry, I would definitely check this out!! If you’re a regular poetry reader, you should also check this out!!

I have a million more books I want to talk about but this feels sufficient!! If you end up reading any of these or already have, PLEASE talk to me about it!! wishing you all a joyous and well read new year <3