THE ingenious collections included in our nineteenth annual feature celebrating debut books of poetry are composed of poems that were written more than a decade ago, if not a few years back. Given the sheer amount of time that goes into dreaming up, creating, writing, and editing a book, it seems fitting to focus on the past, present, and future aspects of the following ten collections—both temporally and in the collapsing and conflation of the chronological that often takes place within art. In the beginning of the pandemic, Leah Nieboer (SOFT APOCALYPSE) was paying attention to the growing instability and treacherousness of our world and “thinking about the future…as something an erotic trace of the past or present can release, something we can perform through our rhythms of relationship.” In…
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Poets & Writers (Digital) - 1 Issue, January/February 2024