Marvelous nature poems, sentences that ground you in the world of growth, life, and abundance. Read these outside, with your lungs full of fresh air and your ears full of birdsong.
Wickerwork by Christian Lehnert, (List Price: $18, Archipelago, 9781962770248, April 2026)
Reviewed by Emily, Thank You Books in Birmingham, AL
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Jenny Erpenbeck knows exactly where to apply pressure for maximal effect. This collection is an astounding demonstration of intellect shot through with wisdom, insights gathered over a lifetime of deep engagement with art, country, family, and the vagaries of time. Those moments of clarity that are always absconding? Erpenbeck has gathered them all here, made the impermanent permanent with her words (stunningly translated by Kurt Beals).
Things That Disappear by Jenny Erpenbeck, (List Price: $15.95, New Directions, 9780811238113, October 2025)
Reviewed by Kristen Iskandrian, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama
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For poetry on joy, wonder, and passion found through the observation of nature, look no further than World, a posthumous work by Portuguese poet Ana Luisa Amaral. Filled with odes and paens to spiders, magpies, and centipedes, World reads like a cheerful wave goodbye to a beautiful planet. Each translated poem sits alongside the original Portuguese, and through both we enter a unique vision of the tiny garden growing in Amaral’s heart. Grand and affirming, Amaral returns to the spring of life with the clarity of winter.
World by Ana Luísa Amaral, (List Price: 16.95, New Directions, 9780811234832, April 2023)
Reviewed by Amanda Depperschmidt, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia
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Utterly phenomenal. These lullabies are a sordid whirlwind of passion and fury, palpable through every little syllable. Pit Lullabies is brimming with lyrics to keep you up at night, delivered by an oracular voice sure to propel this collection straight into a classic.
Pit Lullabies by Jessica Traynor, (List Price: $16.95, Bloodaxe Books, 9781780376066, June 2022)
Reviewed by Phoenix Tefel, Foggy Pine Books in Boone, North Carolina
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Read the celebrated and reviled poems that Victor Hugo called “un nouveau frisson.” Follow the trail of Symbolism that once led Rimbaud and T.S. Eliot. Witness an unparalleled vision of decadence and disgust, in an as-yet unrivaled translation by Richard Howard. Go back to 1857 to experience a poetic modernité that heralds our future
Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire, (List Price: $14.95, David R. Godine, Publisher, 9781567927245, May 2022)
Reviewed by Conor Hultman from Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi
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