Thursday, January 02, 2025

Best Poems of 2024

I write poetry. I read a lot of poetry, too. If you glanced over yesterday’s post, the list of titles read last year, you saw many poetry titles, maybe even a poet or two you’ve heard of. I finished a collection by Walt Whitman, for instance. I plucked it from Kent’s bookshelf and started reading it in 2023. I read slowly and I read several books at once, so it often takes me a long time to get to the end of a heavier book. No Whitman poems appear in the list I am posting today — not because I have chosen against declaring any of them “best.” Rather, I haven’t spent enough time with individual poems yet. Likely some will show up among the 2025 “Best Poems.” We’ll see. In any case, that’s my method. When reading a book of poems I keep handy a stack of placemarks. If I want to reread a poem, I slide in a placemark. I come back to the poem, read it again and again. If I decide it’s something I don’t want to leave behind I hand copy it and save it in a three-ring binder. I have tried to figure out what my criteria are, without much success. I like sounds. I like transformations. I like double meanings. I like humor. I like surprise. I dislike poem-as-wisdom. Given the same sources, a different reader would choose different favorites. A “best” list by you, would not be mine. 


Tim DÅ‚ugos   …..   Incredible Risks

Tim Dlugos   …..   Nerves

Tim Dlugos   …..   To Clear Things Up, Scott

Tim Dlugos   …..   Wall Street Sauna

Federico Garcia Lorca   …..   Landscape of the Vomiting Multitude

Hsin Ch’i-chu   …..   En Route to Po-shan

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz   …..   Divine Laura, my life was always yours

Jacqueline Kudler   …..   January 2007

Lu Chi   …..   from Rhymeprose on Literature 

Oktay Rifat   …..   In the Street

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

Titles Read in 2024

January 

Modern Turkish Poetry

edited & translated by Feyyaz Kayacan Fergar


Fluent Forever: how to learn any language fast and never forget it

Gabriel Wyner


The Empress Is a Man: stories from the life of Jose Sarria 

Michael Robert Gorman


Running the Amazon

Joe Kane


Evening Street Review

#37, spring 2023


February


Songs from a Mountain

Amanda Nadelberg


The Rest of It: hustlers, cocaine, depression, and then some, 1976-1988

Martin Duberman


Ms. Marvel, vol. 1: No Normal

G. Willow Wilson, writer; Adrian Alphona, artist


The Gay & Lesbian Review

Nov-Dec 2023, v.30 n.6


The Rainbow People

Laurence Yep; illustrated by David Wiesner


Lives of Great Men 

Chike Frankie Edozien


Selected Poems

Edna St. Vincent Millay


March


Berkeley Poetry Review, #52: When the world moves on

[contains two of my poems]


Pidgin Eye

Joe Balaz


The Book of J

translated from the Hebrew by David Rosenberg; interpreted by Harold Bloom


Hint

Deborah Fruchey


Mei Yao-chien and the Development of Early Sung Poetry

Jonathan Chaves


Mr. Know-It-All: the tarnished wisdom of a filth elder

John Waters


Love Wins: the lovers and lawyers who fought the landmark case for marriage equality 

Debbie Cenziper & Jim Obergefell


April


Uncle Tungsten: memories of a chemical boyhood

Oliver Sacks


Waiting for the Barbarians: essays from the classics to pop culture

Daniel Mendelsohn


This Arab Is Queer: an anthology of LGBTQ+ Arab writers

edited by Elias Jahshan


Poetry

v.222 n.2, May 2023


The Nib: Drugs

#8


Ms. Marvel, vol. 2: Generation Why

G. Willow Wilson, writer; Jacob Wyatt, Adrian Alphona, artists


West Branch

n.56, sp/su 2005


Stupid?

mini comic by Harry S. Robins


The Best American Poetry 2023

Elaine Equi, guest editor; David Lehman, series editor


Whetu Moana: contemporary Polynesian poems in English

edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri, and Robert Sullivan


Berkeley Poetry Review

#41, 2010


Ten-Word Tiny Tales to Inspire and Unsettle

Joseph Coelho


The Nib, n.1: Death


Day for Night

Valerie Sopher


May


Alta

issue #25


The Last Word

Hanif Kureishi


Wow

Bill Manhire


Restless

Joseph Kai


El Golpe Chileno

Julien Poirier


Art and Fear: observations on the perils (and rewards) of artmaking

David Bayles & Ted Orland


The Gay & Lesbian Review

v. 31 n.3, May-June 2024


June


Lifespan, v.8: Achievement

July 2023, edited by Matt Potter; contains my poem “Building a House”


City Poet: the life and times of Frank O’Hara

Brad Gooch


Mauri Ola: contemporary Polynesian poems in English (Whetu Moana II)

edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri, and Robert Sullivan


The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion


Talisman: a journal of contemporary poetry and poetics

#16, fall 1996

Edward Foster, editor


The Passion of Gengorah Tagame: master of gay erotic manga, vol. 2

Anne Ishii, Chip Kidd, Graham Holbeins, editors; Vincent W. J. Van Gergen Dei, translator


July


20,000 Steps Around the World: great hikes, walks, route and rambles

Stuart Butler and Mary Capteron Morton


Gaytheist: coming out of my Orthodox childhood

Lonnie Mann, writer; Lonnie Mann & Ryan Gatts, art


The Complete Kake Comics 

Tom of Finland; edited by Dian Hanson


Looking for Transwonderland: travels in Nigeria

Noo Saro-wiwa


The Gay & Lesbian Review

v.31 n.4, July/Aug 2024


Already Home: a topography of spirit and place

Barbara Gates


Fire Island: a century in the life of an American paradise

Jack Parlett


August


Queer as All Get Out: 10 people who’ve inspired me

Shelby Criswell


The Old Gays Guide to the Good Life

The Old Gays of TikTok


Normal: transsexual CEOs, crossdressing cops, and hermaphrodites with attitude

Amy Bloom


The Widow’s Handbook: poetic reflections on grief and survival

edited by Jacqueline Lapidus and Lise Mean


Gutted

Justin Chin


King-Cat Comics & Stories

#83, May 2024

John Porcellino


September


Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: living and writing in the West

Wallace Stegner


The Book on the Book Shelf

Henry Petroski


Moms

Yeong-shin Ma, translated by Janet Hong


The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature

Victor Mair, editor


Undetectable

a play by Tom Wright


October


The Gay & Lesbian Review

v.31 n.5, Sept-Oct 2024


Our Deep Gossip: conversations with gay writers on poetry and desire

Christopher Hennessy


Pylon

box set of 4 CDs and an LP-sized book with an essay by Stephen Eisner


Transient and Strange: notes on the science of life

Nell Greenfieldboyce


The Land Between Two Rivers: writing in an age of refugees

Tom Sleigh


The New York Review of Books

May 2024, v.71 n.8


A Fast Life: the collected poems of Tim Dlugos

edited by David Trinidad


Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: short stories, prose, and diary excerpts

Sylvia Plath


Grief

Andrew Holleran


Poetry

Sept 2024, v.224 n.5


The Wandering State: poems from alta, vol. 1: San Francisco

edited by Kim Shuck


Sor Juana’s Love Poems

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz; translations by Jaime Manrique and Joan Larkin


Cheshire Crossing

Andy Weir and Sarah Andersen


My Body: new & selected poems 

Joan Larkin


December


Impossible People: a completely average recovery story

Julia Wertz


The Gay & Lesbian Review

v.31 n.6, Nov-Dec 2024


Mexican Poetry: 20/20 voices, a bilingual anthology

Brandel France de Bravo, editor


Complete Poetry and Selected Prose

Walt Whitman; edited by James E. Miller, Jr.


Surrealist Poetry: an anthology

edited & translated by Willard Bohn


The Homosexual Tradition in American Poetry: expanded edition

Robert K. Martin


Raven Understands: a happy memoir

Marvin K. Hiemstra


Have You Seen This Man?: the Castro poems of Karl Tierney

edited by Jim Cory


Writing on Empty: a guide to finding your voice

Natalie Goldberg


The Fifth Risk

Michael Lewis



*****


This list encompasses all books I finished reading in 2024, no matter when I happened to start them. It includes a few magazines, ones I’ve read from cover to cover, but not necessarily all of those. The list does not include anything I’ve read on the web. I have read a lot on the web, but it’s too hard to keep track of.