Paige Ackerson-Kiely - My Love Is a Dead Arctic Explorer

Full disclosure: Paige is a good friend of mine and co-edits the literary journal I publish, Handsome. That is just how much I loved this book; I'm willing to risk you thinking I'm a nepotistic asshole just so you'll do yourself a favor and read one of the best collections of poetry I've picked up in years. Paige hits it out of the park with poems that are so completely realized, I can't help but believe she is securing a prominent spot in the history of American letters.

Karen Rigby - Chinoiserie

Although Karen and I are press-mates, I don't know her--in fact, we're not even Facebook friends (OMG!). Black Ocean is known for publishing a fair number of prose-poems but I personally value the line tremendously. Karen's meticulous attention to enjambment and white space, combined with her brutal economy of language, make for a cavalcade of knock-out lines that also amount to really satisfying poems.

Ariana Reines - Mercury

I'm not friends with Ariana either, though I'd like to be if she'd just return my emails... If I loved the other two books for their fine-tuned restraint, I loved this book for its wild willingness to indulge impulse. Peppered with pithy short poems, sigil-like inscriptions and incantatory language that is at times absurd and at times arresting in its seriousness, Mercury is the id within my conflicted heart.

—Janaka Stucky

Emmanuel Hocquard The Invention of Glass  

If you ever have any desire to understand the poetic tradition post Romanticism then you know a thing or two about reflection and know a thing or two about self-reflection in the poem and know a thing or two about how mind blowing the mirror (here glass and its invention) can be to your poet heart. This translation is important and should not be missed. 

Ben Lerner Mean Free Path 

Mean Free Path is smarter than me and my own walk-a-bouts. This doesn't mean I wouldn't fire walk with it if it proposed we do.

Lily Ladewig The Silhouettes 

This books offers silhouettes of brevity brought to the windy paths of the New York style observation: everything I adore about honesty buckled up, gagged, and given mere moments breath. 

—A Minetta Gould

Black Ocean's own Zachary Schomburg will spend the weekend in Boise, ID, home of our managing editor Ms. A. Minetta Gould. While in Boise Schomburg will conduct two writing workshops, visit Idaho's natural wonders, read alongside local poetry band The True Wheel (a duo consisting and the poet Karena Youtz & her husband Doug Martsch), read with poem films created by local artist John Shinn, and sleep in a swanky hotel. The first reading is at 6PM on Saturday, May 5 and the second is at 8PM on Sunday, May 6. Both readings will take place at The Crux Coffee House and are free and open to the public. 

We will post videos from each reading on our youtube page when they become available. 

So maybe we must swallow these poems without chewing. They are (already) tessellations of memory, fantasy, and fear that re-discover the missing beauty of the quotidian.

Verse daily posted a poem from Fjords this week.

And over on the Rumpus, a poem from Scary, No Scary is featured as part of the Last Poem I Loved series.

It was like me. I was the poem already; my own limbs had been torn off when I moved to a farm in the Oregon woods, where I became a sort of tree. 

So what are you going to be?  

—A ghost.  

I stole a white sheet from the line.

Leaves were stuck to it, I’ll

Punch some holes in it, I’ll 

Jump from the balconies

Of bleached buildings.

—A Minetta Gould

No Grave Can Hold My Body Down is a grass fed and finished cow freshly slaughtered. That is to say it’s the best beef one could ask for. That is to say it’s of the best traditions of poetry one could ask for. McCollough sites the grass’s uncut hair of graves, leaves his good shirt by “a clearing / within the clearing // of the little lawn,” and begs I to gain solid ground:

as in I will always be I

in this head or out of it jesus my head is full of waters

my american head I must not park on dry grass or leaves

have I always believed or was I converted―towards

what conversations await what customs  

McCollough’s poetry does what I love most about poetry: tells me go get yourself a fucking poem and be it. It tells me “say the passing beauties to the root of my tongue.”  

—A. Minetta Gould  

And while you're at it, check out this review on Justin Helms' blog, where you'll get a good helping of math and philosphy too.

Narrative without losing lyrical beauty, witty without losing gravity, the poems—though fiercely contemporary—still uphold the priorities to delight (“I am working in the ticket booth of the movie theater when you come in and take off my pants”) and to instruct (“Nothing is anyone’s fault, which is something we must remember.

On April 13 & 14, 2012 the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program for Poets and Writers will host the 12th annual Juniper Literary Festival: New Writers/New Writing. Focusing on the ever-changing landscape of new American poetry and fiction, the festival showcases emerging poets and fiction writers alongside dozens of independent journals and presses in a unique national event. Featuring readings by diverse and talented poets and writers, roundtables on crucial creative and professional issues, and a press fair, the festival introduces audiences to vital contemporary writing and explores issues essential to the future of American literature.