April showers bring May flowers, but what goes well with rain? A good book of poetry! (DUH). Enjoy this shift into spring with a few new poetry collections now available at the Peter White Public Library.

THE NEW BOOK: POEMS, LETTERS, BLURBS, AND THINGS by Nikki Giovani is overflowing with love, hope, and poignant reflection. This book is a good place to start if you’re new to poetry due to the relaxed tone and accessible nature of Giovani’s writing- it’s like being let into someone’s diary or riding their train of thought. “The New Book” is a love letter to the community, family, artists, and the youth of today, tomorrow, and yesterday. Giovani tells it like it is with both personal and historical insight about America and the Black experience, urging her fellow citizens to be active members of society, to vote, and to love each other strong and hard. Published posthumously, this collection is Giovanni’s last, but as she says about fellow writer and artist Ashley Bryan in “My First Visit with Ashley,” “you’re not dead until you are forgotten,” and Giovani will never be forgotten (p. 57).

AND THE HEART WILL NOT QUICKEN by Russel Thorburn is another accessible collection of poetry, drawing readers in with full-bodied imagery, a focus on storytelling, and the fun inclusion of pop culture icons-including but not limited to James Dean, John Lennon, and Edgar Allen Poe. With a reminiscing tone and a damp, earthy quality, there is a mournful current that runs through Thorburn’s writing. As a resident of Marquette Michigan, Thorburn’s work is saturated with his environment, which will be appealing to fellow Michiganders or anyone that finds solace in Lake Superior and the quiet town of Marquette.

Blush / River / Fox by Anna Nygren is avant-garde and playful, breaking the boundaries of traditional poetical form and pushing past the perceived limits of translated works. As the Swedish author’s first English-language work, Blush / River / Fox wonderfully demonstrates the poet’s depth of knowledge as a translator through their use of hidden, double meanings and what they call “miss-spelling[s]” (p. 143). Nygren also utilizes shape, spacing, spelling, color, and drawings of obscure, animal-human hybrids in their experimentation in order to create something soft, abstract, and porous. The language of Nygren’s poetry is both lush and minimalistic, malleable and shifting, and surprises readers with each read through.

A SUN BEHIND US / UN SOL CAÍDO AVANZA by María Auxiliadora Álvarez is flawless, evocative, and my favorite of these four poetry collections. Written as a dual-language work, each poem is presented in Spanish and then in English, allowing for a broader audience and inviting readers to enjoy and compare each version. Written in memory of the poet’s father, Oswaldo Álvarez Rojas, there is a through line of isolation, silence, and refuge in this body of work–a recognition of grief and an emphasis on time and memory. Álvarez’s language and form is both precise and concise, laying an image, a wound, a dream before readers in a single breath and without hesitation. I truly don’t feel as if I can do this book of poetry justice in words, as it’s one that readers will have to experience and feel for themselves.

By Elliot Coldwater

Adult Services Assistant