Monday, January 02, 2023

Best Poems of 2022

Sherwin Bitsui   …..   “Coyote howls canyons into windows …”

Sherwin Bitsui   …..   “The vowels of the starved”


Yosu Buson   …..   three haiku


Kaga no Chiyo (Chiyo-ni)   …..   three haiku


Lydia Davis   …..   Bloomington


Kobayashi Issa   …..   five haiku


Kajetan Kovic   …..   Black Prayer


Jeanne Lupton   …..   four tanka


Jeanne Lupton   …..   four tanka from Numbered Breaths


Jeanne Lupton   …..   three more tanka


Michael Martin   …..   My  Bobcat Skid-Steer Loader Is My Therapy


Meeraji   …..   Call of the Sea


Brane Mozetic   …..   “I fell into a depressing reverie …”


Sheila E. Murphy   …..   “Least amount of air along the walk”


Sheila E. Murphy   …..   “I’m writing this to fathom pleasure”


Milorad Pavic   …..   Seventh Song from Holy Mass for Relja Krilatica


Susan Polizotto   …..   haiku: “She isn’t seeking”


Sandi Pray   …..   haiku: “River clean-up”


Hattori Ransetsu   …..   haiku: “one blossom of plum”


Minal Sarosh   …..   haiku: “Frying kebabs”


Antoinette Scudder   …..   Tea Making


Senryu by anonymous poets   …..   eight sentry


Kelly Shaw   …..   haiku: “Trickling roof leak”


Shiki   …..   three haiku


Masaoka Shiki   ….. haiku: “poppies bloom”


Kim Shuck   …..   The Overseers of Complexity


Dubravko Skurla   …..   Two Shores


Milivoj Slavicek   …..   Once More We Talked a Long Time I and the River


Clark Strand   …..   haiku: “The bathtub spider”


Dietmer Tauchner   …..   haiku: “thaw”


Peter Tchouhov   …..   haiku: “candlelit church”


Paul Violi   …..   Melodrama


Yokoi Yayu   …..   two haiku



*****


I started my own personal anthology of other people’s poems back in 1989. I wanted a source of poems I really loved. When I come across a poem that strikes me just right I tuck a placemark in next to it. I go back to that poem and reread it and reread it. Usually I’ve read a poem five or more times before I decide I can’t leave it behind and have to go to the hassle of copying it out by hand. 


On the first day of the year I read aloud all the poems I collected in the previous year. Yes, I read them aloud to myself. 


If you are curious about previous years, follow the “Best Poems of the Year” link. 

Sunday, January 01, 2023

Titles Read in 2022

January 

Rattle

v.27 n.3, Fall 2021


Without Words and Without Kneeling: a serialized zine novella

1st installment

Tomas Moniz


The World Is One Place: Native American poets visit the Middle East

Diane Glancy, Linda Rodriguez, editors


And Then They Were Gone: teenagers of People’s Temple from high school to Jonestown

Judy Bebelaar and Ron Cabral


Usagi Yojimbo, v.26: Traitors of the Earth

Stan Sakai


Mother Tongue Apologize

Preeti Vangani


Play It As It Lays

Joan Didion


26 Compliments

Marvin K. Hiemstra


The Indelible Occasion

Sheila E. Murphy


A Tale of Two Omars

Omar Sharif Jr


Usagi Yojimbo, v.27: A Town Called Hell

Stan Sakai


Through the Habitrails

Jeff Nicholson


Redwood Burl

Marvin K. Hiemstra


Sky Island: a Trot & Cap’n Bill adventure

Amy Chu and Janet K. Lee


Artifacts

Britta Austin


Chalcedony’s First Ten Songs

Clive Matson


February 


Inner East: illuminated poems and blessings

Marcia Falk


Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time: my life doing dumb stuff with animals

Richard Conniff


Letters for Lucardo

Noora Heikkila


Usagi Yojimbo, v.28: Red Scorpion

Stan Sakai


Mississippi in Africa: the saga of the slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and their legacy in Liberia today

Alan Huffman


Modern Poetry of Pakistan

edited by Iftikhar Arif and Waqas Khwaja


Beyond the Chain Link

Rusty Morrison


Child of War

Genny Lim


How to Kill a City: gentrification, inequality, and the fight for the neighborhood

Peter Moskowitz


Living Quarters

Adrienne Su


The Blithedale Romance

Nathaniel Hawthorne


The Ticket That Exploded: the restored text

William S. Burroughs; edited by Oliver Harris


The Castafiore Emerald

Herge


Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire

Michelle Penaloza


March


Love Is a Tanka

Jeanne Lupton


Usagi Yojimbo, v.29: Two Hundred Jizo

Stan Sakai


Flarf: an anthology of flare

edited by Drew Gardner, Nada Gordon, Sharon Mesmer, et al.


Quatrefoil

James Barr


Poetry

December 2021, v.219 n.3


Gay Bar: why we went out

Jeremy Atherton Lin


Coolidge and Cherkovski in Conversation

edited by Kyle Harvey


Doom Patrol, book three

Grant Morrison, writer; artists: Richard Case, Ken Steacy, et al.


Nocturnes for the King of Naples

Edmund White


Walking the Tightrope: poetry and prose by LGBTQ writers from Africa

edited by Timothy Kimutai, Tatenda Muranda, Spectra, et al.


Akitsu Quarterly

spring 2022


Time Magazine

May 13, 2019 - Pete Buttigieg cover story


The Snow Goose and the Small Miracle

Paul Gallico


April


Deep Hanging Out: wanderings and wonderment in Native California

Malcolm Margolin


Usagi Yojimbo, v.30: Thieves and Spies

Stan Sakai


Sing: poetry from the indigenous Americas

edited by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke


Conscious: a brief guide to the fundamental mystery of the mind

Annaka Harris


Haiku: a poet’s guide

Lee Gurga with Charles Trumbull


Usagi Yojimbo, v.31: The Hell Screen

Stan Sakai


100 Parades: California Poets in the Schools statewide anthology 2000

edited by Molly Fisk


Shapeshift

Sherwin Bitsui


No Pity: people with disabilities forging a new civil rights movement

Joseph P. Shapiro


May


A Vast Sky: an anthology of contemporary world haiku

editors: Bruce Ross, Koko Kto, et al.


Own Face

Clark Coolidge


Flood Song

Sherwin Bitsui


Dissolve

Sherwin Bitsui


Usagi Yojimbo, v.32: Mysteries

Stan Sakai


Gilmpse

sp 2022, issue #55

George J. Searles, editor


Beauty Is a Verb: the new poetry of disability

edited by Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, and Michael Northen


The Best American Poetry 2021

Tracy K. Smith, editor; David Lehman, series editor


Shang-Chi, v.1: Brothers and Sisters

Gene Luen Yang, writer; Dike Ruan, et al., artists


Some Kind of Hero

James Kirkwood


Sky Sea Birds Trees Earth House Beasts Flowers

Kenneth Rexroth


Shang-Chi, v.2: Shang-Chi vs. The Marvel Universe

Gene Luen Yang, writer; Dike Ruan, artist


Usagi Yojimbo, v.33: The Hidden

Stan Sakai


Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, v.1

Ta-Nehisi Coates, writer; Brian Stelfreeze, artist


No Time to Spare: thinking about what matters

Ursula K. Le Guin


Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, v.2:

Ta-Nehisi Coates, writer; Chris Sprouse, artist


June


Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, v.3:

Ta-Nehisi Coates, writer; Brian Stelfreeze, Chris Sprouse, et al., artists


How the South Won the Civil War: oligarchy, democracy, and the continuing fight for the soul of America

Heather Cox Richardson


Bayou Magazine

issue 64, 2015


Statics #1

a comic book by Jeffrey Lewis


Usagi Yojimbo, v.34: Bunraku & other stories

Stan Sakai


Masquerade: queer poetry in America to the end of World War II

edited by Jim Elledge


Third Wave: the new Russian poetry

edited by Kent Johnson and Stephen M. Ashby


Usagi Yojimbo, v.35: Homecoming

Stan Sakai


Rattle

sp 2022, v.28 n.1, whole n.75


Zarafa: a giraffe’s true story, from deep in Africa to the heart of Paris

Michael Allin


P.S. Your Cat Is Dead

James Kirkwood


Burning the Empty Nests

Gregory Orr


Life’s Edge: the search for what it means to be alive

Carl Zimmer


Sudden Windows

Richard Loranger


Akitsu Quarterly

sum 2022


Flight 714

Herge


July


Usagi Yojimbo, v.36: Tengu War

Stan Sakai


Tintin and the Picaros

Herge


Tintin and the Lake of Sharks

based on the cartoon film by Raymond LeBlanc


The Red House

Gregory Orr


The Anarchivist: history, memory, and archives

Geof Huth


Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight? confessions of a gay dad

Dan Bucatinsky


Kiss My Gay Ass: my trip down the Yellow Brick Road through activism, stand-up, and politics

Tom Ammiano


The Grand Piano: an experiment in collective autobiography, San Francisco, 1975-1980, part one

Bob Perelman, Barrett Watten, Steven Benson, Carla Harryman, et al.


We Must Make a Kingdom of It

Gregory Orr


Sassy Planet: a queer guide to 40 cities

Harish Bhandari, David Dodge, Nick Schiarizzi


World War 3 Illustrated #50: Shameless Feminists, a comics anthology


Substrate

Jim Powell


Capyboppy 

Bill Peet


New and Selected Poems

1988. Gregory Orr

[having recently read Orr’s earlier books, I just the “new” section]


City of Salt

Gregory Orr


Out of This World: an anthology of the St. Mark’s poetry project, 1966-1991

edited by Anne Waldman


Locke & Key: The Golden Age

Joe Hill, writer; Gabriel Rodriguez, artist


August


The Grand Piano: an experiment in collective autobiography, San Francisco, 1975-1980, part two

Bob Perelman, Ted Pearson, Rae Armentrout, Barrett Watten, Steven Benson, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, et al.


Gay Sunrise: writing gay liberation in San Francisco, 1968-1974

edited by James Mitchell


Digging to Wonderland: memory pieces

David Trinidad


Embers in the House of Night

Edvard Kocbek; translated by Sonja Kravanja


Unit of Agency

Richard Loranger


Innocents Aboard: new fantasy stories

Gene Wolfe


Colorado Review

v. 48 n.1 sp 2021


Nothing Is Lost: selected poems

Edvard Kockbek; translated by Michael Scammell & Veno Taufer


The Art of Haiku: its history through poems and paintings by Japanese masters

Stephen Addiss


Where I’m Reading From: the changing world of books

Tim Parks


Oziana 1971 

as an ebook 


Oziana 1972

as an ebook


Oziana 1973

as an ebook


Suicide by Language

Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino

(ebook)


September


Mollyhouse

issue #1, edited by Raymond Luczak

(ebook)


Why I Moved to San Francisco

Dale Jensen

(ebook)


What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: the history and future of reading

Leah Price


Extended Remark: poems from a Moravian parking lot

Michael Martin


Akitsu Quarterly

fall 2022


Northerners

Seth Abramson


Smuggling Cherokee

Kim Shuck


October


A Mouthful of Breath Mints and No One to Kiss: a Cathy collection

Cathy Guisewite


The Checklist Manifesto: how to get things right

Atul Gawande


Contemporary Yugoslav Poetry

edited by Vasa D. Mihailovich


Voyagers: the settlement of the Pacific

Nicholas Thomas


Where the Wild Coffee Grows: the untold story of coffee from the cloud forests of Ethiopia to your cup

Jeff Koehler


Denver Quarterly

v. 55 n. 2, sum 2022


Rattle

#76; v. 28 n. 2; sum 2022


Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, my father, and me

Ada Calhoun


Trash Panda

v. 3, sum 2022

Lisa Anne Johnson, editor

[includes haiku by me]


November


Madness, Rack, and Honey: collected lectures

Mary Ruefle


The Best American Poetry 2022

Matthew Zapruder, guest ed., David Lehman, series ed.


Forum: City College of San Francisco literary magazine

v. 14 n. 1; sp 2022

[includes my poems “What Must Be Used Is Readily Available” and “This Tunnel”]


Know Me Here: an anthology of poetry by women

edited by Katherine Hastings


A House By Itself: selected haiku by Masuoka Shiki

translated by John Brandi, Noriko Kawasaki Martinez


Horizontal Vertigo: a city called Mexico

Juan Villoro, tr. Alfred MacAdam


Who Ate the First Oyster? the extraordinary people behind the greatest firsts in history

Cody Cassidy


Postcards from the Edge

Carrie Fisher


Unfinished Sketches of a Revolution

Brane Mozetic


Blue Colonial

David Roderick


The Half-Finished Heaven: the best poems of Tomas Transtromer

translated by Robert Bly


Cerasus Magazine

issue #4, 2022, London

[includes two chapters from Autobiography of a Book]


When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

Chen Chen


December


Tintin: the Complete Companion

Michael Farr


Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and me

Bill Hayes


Lucien’s Story: a memoir of Lucien Duckstein

Aleksandra Kroh, translated by Austryn Wainhouse


Orpheus and Eurydice: a lyric sequence

Gregory Orr


Banalities

Brane Mozetic, translated by Elizabeth Zargi and Timothy Liu


Holiday in the Islands of Grief

Jeffrey McDaniel


The Grand Piano: an experiment in collective autobiography, San Francisco, 1975-1980, part three

Bob Perelman, Ted Pearson, Rae Armentrout, Barrett Watten, Steven Benson, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson


The World Between Two Covers: reading the globe

Ann Morgan


You Suck at Art and Bad Friend

two self-published mini comics by Sappho Bushtit


Four Letter Words

Truong Tran


Rattle

#77, v. 23 n. 3; fall 2022


A Dynamic Range of Various Designs for Quiet

Josh Bettinger


Butterflies

Brane Mozetic, tr. Ana Jelnikar


Weird Book

Kyle Harter

Bury It

Sam Sax