A New Day
Sue Mell
She Writes Press (2024)
200 pp.

Mell’s style feels reminiscent of Lily King’s Writers and Lovers and Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, blending intimacy and realism with a sharp eye for detail. Her writing captures small but powerful moments. One of the many lines that stuck with me reads: “Sometimes when you meet someone in a passing moment—a moment that’ll never repeat—they’ll share something with you that they didn’t even know they wanted or needed to say.” That feels like an apt description of the book, honestly. These insights pop up throughout the collection, making you pause and appreciate the beauty of the concept.

My Women
Yuliia Iliukha, translated by Hanna Leliv
128 LIT, 2024
84 pp.

Each vignette in My Women begins by introducing the woman at the center of the short story in one sentence. Although the women have subtle age markers, hair colors, or clothing styles, their identities are dictated by the war.

Calendar
Dawn Potter
Deerbrook Editions, 2024
109 pp.

The poems in this collection are closely aligned with the natural world, so much so that it’s really enticing to wander with the poet-speaker in this landscape that is both familiar (especially to those of us who live in New England) and unfamiliar, we can feel the thrum of life just below the visible world.

The Wives
Simone Gorrindo
Simon and Schuster, 2024
405 pp.

The Smoke of You
Jesse Amber
MilSpeak Foundation, Inc., 2023
213 pp.

People can acknowledge the modesty of their first home while also feeling a sudden, dizzying prosperity: most people don’t go into the military because they’re rich.

St. Matthew Passion
Gjertrud Schnackenberg
Arrowsmith Press, 2024
100 pp.

….a tour de force, a personal and introspective reflection on and with Bach’s sacred oratorio of the same title. At times musical commentary, and at others, musings on concerns of a more intimate nature, the text follows much of the libretto and musical movements in Bach’s famous work from 1727.

The Miro Worm and the Mysteries of Writing
Sven Birkerts
Arrowsmith Press (October 2024)
184 pp.

Birkerts talks about how the very act of writing distances us from what we’re writing about. Memories change when we capture them in words; they become stories we’ve crafted rather than moments we’ve lived.

Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect
Koss
Diode Editions, October 2024

One immediately thinks about placing Koss in the company of the poet, Anne Sexton…

New and Selected Poems
Glyn Maxwell
Arrowsmith Press, 2024
201 pp.

We are all invited on a labyrinthine journey, one that is, at times, both daunting and mystifying, but at others, the pain, the sarcasm, and the flippancy that underscores the text shows us what Maxwell is up to—and he forces us to gaze unflinchingly at the real, the iconic, and the unlovely as they are revealed to us.

SILICONE
Amalie Flynn

These poems could not be timelier, given our country’s battles over the subject of abortion.

Feeding the Ghosts
Rahul Mehta
University Press of Kentucky

His tangible lines go back and forth with the braiding of his past and his understanding of a brown, queer man’s life in Appalachia, India and in universities.

The First Law of Holes
Meg Pokrass
Dzanc Books

Existential themes appear in her work again and again, with everyday routines contrasted with deep reflections on life, illness, and personal struggles.

The Weeping Degree: How Astrology Saved Me from Suicide
Kelly Watt
Wild Rising Press (August 2024)
110 pp

With a writerly deftness that calls to mind an artist suggesting a complete image in a few pencil strokes, Watt manages to tell us just enough of her now-remembered childhood that we can carry the knowledge without it weighing us down. In free verse, shape poems and micro essays, Watt gives us just enough of where she’s been and where she’s going.

The Princess of Las Vegas
Chris Bohjalian
Doubleday (2024)
378 pp.

This is where things go wildly off the rails. Vegas, often called Sin City, is all that and more. Include some very dangerous mob-style characters, an ultra-conservative female US Senator, and a whole lot of money and guns…

Beowulf: A New Translation
Maria Dahvana Headley
MCD x FSG Originals
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020
136 pp.

Wait. Chain mail? Bar? Yes, this is the diction employed by Maria Dahvana Headley for her rollicking, glory-filled translation of the timeless epic, Beowulf.

The Ill-Fitting Skin
Shannon Robinson
Press 53 (May 2024)
242 pp.

This collection explores relationships through the lenses of surrealism and magical realism, presenting a series of tales that are as imaginative as they are reflective.

Devout, a Memoir of Doubt
Anna Gazmarian
Simon and Schuster
178 pp

“The message was clear: Doubt was an enemy…[In] a live action Christian TV show called Bibleman…Doubt is a personified villain with a cape, the archnemesis of the show’s hero, who has a six-pack.”

Away, Away
Mark Pawlak
Arrowsmith Press, 2024
97 pp.

We are on a road trip, a purposeful meander, one that focuses on the esoteric and the sublime found on strange road signs, restroom notices, and other evidence of human habitation.

Daybreak
By Matt Gallagher
Simon & Schuster/Atria Books (February 20, 2024)
256 pp.

Coming to Ukraine had been Lee’s idea: “What else you got going on?”

So as Not to Die Alone
By Lisa Johnson Mitchell
Finishing Line Press (January 2024)
70 pp.

Mitchell navigates the strains and tensions within families with sensitivity, delving into themes of resentment, grief, and the weight of responsibility. Through moments of humor and honesty, she deftly balances the complexities of these relationships, offering readers a nuanced portrayal of human connection.

Hereverent by Katie Manning
Agape Editions
78 pp.

What have we always done with ancient scripture but read into it, seeking old answers that still hold true?