I’m reading at least twenty books at the moment (I’m just eyeballing the stacks on my nightstand), from Wake Up and Roar by Papaji to The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy — but there are books that have lingered on the nightstand for a few months because I continue to return to them.
They’re all books of poetry. The only books I return to more than once, other than spiritual texts, are poetry books. You don’t finish a book of poetry, you either learn to live with it or toss it aside. These books have managed to integrate themselves into my life — my mind has made a home for them, as they’ve made a home for my mind.
They’re places to be, to think in, to think through, to feel out. They’re a pleasure.
Tess Taylor, Works & Days (Red Hen Press, 2016)
Jennifer Pilch, Deus Ex Machina (Kelsey Street Press, 2015)
John Phillips, Heretic (Longhouse, 2016)
Darcie Dennigan, Palace of Subatomic Bliss (2016, Canarium)
R. F. Langley, Complete Poems (Carcanet, 2015)
[We’re pleased to have published poems from what would become Jennifer Pilch’s Deus Ex Machina. You can read them here. — Eds.]