BOA Blog

So many lines and phrases stand out from this collection as new favorites—among them, “as if paint could stop peeling/from our houses every year.” It’s difficult, though, to extract quotations from the complete poems, knowing that the weight of Clifton’s words often comes from the way she deliberately positions phrases within each poem to startle, delight, or warn.

The first thing I notice about Chaun Ballard’s Second Nature is how formally ambitious it is—the first poem, “A Poem Ending with a Strambotto wherein I Include an Extra Line That Is Myself or A Poem in which I Name the Flower,” shows that this is a collection that will not hold back, both in subject matter and in structure, packing each poem with evocative phrases housed in thoughtfully constructed lines.

Girmay’s language makes us feel like a child again, learning about death as if for the first time. Her writing is benedictive; it blesses us and forgives us, it reminds us that we are living and breathing and alive. One of the most shocking moments from this collection is in the poem “Your Words Again”, in which Girmay incorporates a diagram with the words ‘Dead’ and ‘Alive’ on opposing sides of a dotted line. Something about seeing this visual representation is startling, but her words bring to it a beautiful catharsis, narrating the experience of death as being carried over this line in a chair. 

When the comfort of human connection falls short in a world that feels increasingly disconnected, Austin alerts us to the pleasure of music, language, and even, uniquely, fashion. One of my favorite poems in this collection is Ode on Symone’s Do-rag, in which he writes “I am yards of blue satin.” Not only is this comparison almost eerily lovely, but it proves Austin’s lyrical mastery by reversing the mechanisms in the commonly used literary machine of personification.

Splashed Things by Leigh Lucas is a raw, intimate poetry collection that follows the speaker’s journey through grief following the suicide of her ex-boyfriend. With striking candor, the speaker allows readers to step into her grieving mind, laying bare her journey to healing.