The Best American Poetry 2024 (edited by David Lehman and Mary Jo Salter)

Back when I was in grad school, I have fond memories of going to Borders or Barnes & Noble in early September, hoping that year's Best American Poetry would be on the shelf.  So it was nice to have an excuse to buy this again! 

The RHC category was "pick a 2015 Read Harder Challenge task to complete." As you may recall, I started doing the challenge in 2016, and I've been slowly crossing off the 2015 challenges after the fact. I was down to four, and one was "a collection of poetry" so I figured I'd feed two birds with one grape, as we say on my team at work, in lieu of the more violent metaphor.  There's just something about reading each poem on paper, and flipping back to the notes to see what the author has to say about the poem, and then going back and re-reading it, and dog-earing my favorites... on Kindle it's just not the same.

Unfortunately I don't think Mary Jo Salter and I share the same taste. A lot of exact rhyme. A lot of long poems about nature. A lot of "big names." Very little contemporaneity or silliness, no prose poetry at all.  A lot of poems I thought were actively bad. There will always be hits and misses in any anthology, but as a whole, the collection didn't do it for me.

Still, there are some gems in here as far as I'm concerned. My favorite poem was probably Cleptopolitan by Brendan Constantine, which is exactly the type of James Tate-esque surrealism I enjoy. I also liked Domestic Retrograde by John Hennessey, Sentimental Evening by Natalie Scenters-Zapico, and The Days by Adrienne Su.  And I did dog-ear a handful of other poems that I enjoyed or found moving.

Looking up the 2025 version, it looks like it will be David Lehman's last. I might have to visit Barnes & Noble in September, one more time, just for old time's sake.

Forward: Stories of Tomorrow (edited by Blake Crouch)

I loooooove speculative fiction, and this collection of six stories was free on Amazon Prime.  On the whole this was a great collection but here are mini-reviews of each of the stories:

"Ark" by Veronica Roth 

About a scientist cataloging Earth’s flora in the last days of the apocalypse. Very moving and a great start to the collection. 

"Summer Frost" by Blake Crouch

About a video game developer whose character breaks free from her programming. Maybe my favorite of all of thses! Makes me want to seek out more of his work.

"Emergency Skin" by N. K. Jemisin

An explorer from a civilizaton of elites who has come back to Earth to get genetic materal (and amazing twist as to what the material ends up being). a little heavy handed but really good. 

"You Have Arrived at Your Destination" by Amor Towles 

About a man who considers using a futuristic futility cliinic to plan his child’s future. Great concept, somewhat flawed execution. 

"The Last Conversation" by Paul G. Tremblay 

A man wakes up with no memories and has to slowly realize who he is, with the help of a mysterious doctor. Wonderfully creepy! Really loved it. 

"Randomize" by Andy Weir 

This is about a high tech casino heist and my expectations were high! I loved the premise but the ending was not good and ultimate I think this was my least favorite.

Books Read While Melting

Another set of books finished on a trip - this time a work trip to Austin during a week when the temperatures were in the 100-110 range. Thus, the melting.  Although I read many of these on airplanes and in cool hotel rooms, as always.

Sorry, Bro (by Taleen Voskuni) 

This book is a debut by an Armenian-American author. I loved the Armenian proverbs that began each chapter and were woven throughout the text.  The writing was subtly funny and there was great chemistry between the leads. Great cast of characters and amazing main character. I kept letting this one expire because the title put me off, but I'm glad I kept putting it back on my library list so I could finally get to it!

The Appeal (by Janice Hallett) 

A really fun epistolary mystery, and such a page-turner. Clever, funny, super satisfying and entertaining. If you're a fan of Agatha Christie-style mysteries, you have to read this one.

The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era (by Gareth Russell) 

One of the RHC categories this year is once again "Pick a challenge from any of the previous years’ challenges to repeat!" and I've been working on the 2015 challenges, since I started the RHC in 2016 so I missed that year completely. If I don't do any double counting, I've completed 14 categories from that challenge, but this is the one that is the most unique so this is the one I think I'll count for 2023.  A microhistory zooms in on a small event in history and connects it to a broader context, which this fits perfectly. It was also really fascinating, although very focused on the aristocracy.  (It all made sense when the author gave a shoutout to his friend Emerald Fennell at the end - he's clearly from that class himself.) Still, fascinating!

Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (by Chen Chen)

As with most poetry collections, uneven with moments of transcendence. Read for the category "book of poetry by a BIPOC or queer author" (Chen is both).  He includes a memorial poem to Justin Chin, a poet who I met at his reading with Beth Lisick decades ago that was part of the reason I moved to the San Francisco area to study poetry.  I had no idea Chin had died in the interim; I still have his signed book somewhere. But at any rate, I liked this fine.

If Tomorrow Doesn't Come (by Jen St. Jude)

The Sapphic spiritual successor to The Fault in Our Stars. A tearjerker that reads like a YA but allows the characters to just be in college already.  Reminded me also a bit of Last Night (the Canadian film starring Sandrah Oh) with its apocalyptic setting.  Also recommended! Hey, I enjoyed most of these books! Love when I get a good run like this.