We here at Philly Poetry Chapbook Review love poetry, whether it’s in chapbooks or full-length collections. We have a hunch that our readers do, too. Every Tuesday, we publish an update about what full-length poetry titles we know are releasing in the following week.
Information, including product descriptions, is provided by the publisher and not a critical judgment. If we cover the book on this site, links will be included.
Seafarer: New Poems with Earthling and Forever, James Longenbach
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date: July 23, 2024
Format: Hardcover / eBook
Standing on the shore, preparing to journey into the unknown, James Longenbach wrote these final poems with astonishing courage and clarity. Seafarer opens with a gorgeous sequence in which the poet looks down on his life from above, as if he’s already left it behind. With prophetic perception, Longenbach reflects on the encroaching tide of mortality through myth and memory. This volume unites Seafarer with Forever (2021) and the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Earthling (2017); the three works have a powerful symmetry in their recognition of the ordinary, extraordinary, and precarious experiences of love and loss.
James Longenbach (1959–2022) was the author of seven volumes of poems and eight books of prose. His honors include an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
The Strongbox, Sasha Dugdale
Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.
Publication Date: July 25, 2024
Format: Paperback / eBook
The Strongbox opens with the abduction of a woman to a foreign land and ends with the Rape of Europa. Drawing in elements of Greek mythology, epic literature and recent history, this protean work gives shape to a cast of characters both ancient and modern, as they flit in and out of tales, their voices overlapping and interacting. An unnamed girl is persuaded to leave behind her country and her childhood and travel to a warzone. Helen of Sparta, already trapped behind the walls of Ilium, is plagued by dreams about the coming conflict. Gods continue their manipulations, while mortals persist in defying the will of their gods. Through a series of interconnected scenes and dialogues this singular work traces the role of myth in shaping our accounts of both history and contemporary events.
Sasha Dugdale has published six collections with Carcanet. The Strongbox is her most recent book (May, 2024). Her fifth collection Deformations was shortlisted for the 2020 T. S. Eliot Prize and Derek Walcott Prize. Joy (2017) was a Poetry Book Society Choice and the title poem was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2016. Her recent translations for theatre include Bad Roads and The Grainstore by Ukrainian playwright Natalya Vorozhbit. She is former editor of Modern Poetry in Translation, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Mother Water Ash, Nicole Cooley
Publisher: LSU Press
Publication Date: July 25, 2024
Format: Paperback / eBook
Mother Water Ash, a wrenching new collection of poems by Nicole Cooley, explores the personal grief of a mother’s sudden death alongside the environmental crises of the storms, fires, and floods that now dominate our world. Examining the landscapes of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, these poems ponder what it means to mourn in the face of ecological catastrophe, and traipse the terrains left by loss.
Nicole Cooley is the author of six books of poems, including Of Marriage and Girl after Girl after Girl. Her first book, Resurrection, won the Walt Whitman Award. Raised in New Orleans, Cooley is professor of English in the MFA Program for Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, CUNY, and lives outside of New York City with her family.
Beyond Cornfields, Elaine M. Seaman
Publisher: Finishing Line Press
Publication Date: July 26, 2024
Format: Paperback
Traveling Beyond Cornfields is the heart of this collection of poems by Elaine M. Seaman. Starting from her miniature town in Iowa to various states, especially Colorado and Michigan, and countries, especially Mexico and New Zealand, she notices intricacies in landscape, flora, fauna, and humanity. She recognizes life lived and life lost. But she always remembers that Home is just ahead. Warm rooms in our clover meadow, oaks and pine. Home. Ahead.
Elaine M. (Koren) Seaman grew up near the cornfields of Iowa but has lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan, for over forty years. Her sons draw her to Colorado and New Zealand each year and wanderlust takes her to other parts of the planet. Finishing Line Press published her first book of poetry, Rocks in the Wheatfield, in 2004. Her self-published book (2019), My Mother Sewed Dresses for Five, contains quilts she made and poems she wrote that share titles. The American Quilter’s Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, has one of her quilts in their collection, as do many private collectors.
Hereafter, Alan Felsenthal
Publisher: The Song Cave
Publication Date: July 25, 2024
Format: Paperback
Alan Felsenthal’s tender second collection of poems, Hereafter, moves between the difficult work of mourning and the spirited nature of life. Both an elegy for a dear friend and a search for signs of renewal, these poems recover pastoral symbols of sorrow from cliché. Essential in their attempt at consolation, Felsenthal’s requiems traverse landscapes—the ocean, the Earth, and the moon—using both humor and pathos to awaken the depths of feeling that follow loss.
Alan Felsenthal is the author of Lowly (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017). His writing has appeared in BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Magazine. He is the co-editor of A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (The Song Cave, 2013) and the editor of Bookworm: Conversations with Michael Silverblatt (The Song Cave, 2023). He teaches poetry at NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
Ash Keys: New Selected Poems, Michael Longley
Publisher: Wake Forest University Press
Publication Date: July 25, 2024
Format: Hardcover / eBook
The title of Michael Longley’s New Selected Poems is taken from his poem ‘Ash Keys’. The wing-shaped, wind-borne seeds of the ash-tree might be an image for poems in search of their readers. This selection, based on thirteen individual collections, represents Longley’s unusual range as a lyric poet.
It shows how his themes, genres and forms have evolved and interlaced since the 1960s. Love, violence, the natural world, art, psychodrama, family, the Great War, the Homeric past and Northern Ireland’s troubled present cohabit in these pages – as do depth, wit and beauty. Longley’s poems of the west of Ireland, which pivot on Carrigskeewaun, his ‘soul landscape’, have also made him a pioneer of ‘eco-poetry’.
Michael Longley was born in Belfast where he still lives. He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Trinity College Dublin where he read Classics. He has published eleven collections of poetry including Angel Hill (2017), which won the PEN Pinter Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Other volumes have earned him the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, and the Griffin International Prize. He served as Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2007 to 2010. He is married to the critic Edna Longley and has three children. Michael Longley was born in Belfast where he still lives.
book of provocations, mónica teresa ortiz
Publisher: Host Publications
Publication Date: July 27, 2024
Format: Paperback
In book of provocations, mónica teresa ortiz posits that the most important role of the poet is that of “provocateur, to prod the audience, to interpret a visible and invisible world, to unveil secrets through the communication of language, sound, and meaning.” Tender and radical, these poems offer an unflinching look into the present, which they see with a brutal clarity.
In fragmented lyric and explosive song, mónica teresa ortiz’s poems explore catastrophe, illustrating in verse the refusal of the human spirit to submit to systems of oppression, and its undying cry for liberation. Because these are love poems, too. Singing for their beloveds, for hope, for deliverance. Singing for the afterlife, which ortiz envisions as a queer futurity in which “Nothing matters more than halting the brutal mechanizations of colonialism.”
With the Joe W. Bratcher Prize, Host Publications aims to amplify the kind of work that Joe was most passionate about—poetry that pushes the boundaries of form, art and culture, poetry that is urgent in its subject matter, poetry with a heart that beats for change.
mónica teresa ortiz (they / them) is a poet, memory worker, and critic born, raised, and based in Texas.
Don’t see a poetry title published between 7/23 and 7/29 here? Contact us to let us know!
Contents
Check out new poetry books published the week of 7/2 from Black Lawrence Press, LSU Press, Persea, Omnidawn, Bloodaxe Books and Central Avenue Publishing.
Check out new poetry chapbooks for June 2024 from Driftwood Press, Sheila-Na-Gig Inc., Diode Editions, Querencia Press, The Poetry Box, Finishing Line Press, Bottlecap Press and an Editor’s Pick from Tupelo Press.
Check out new poetry books published the week of 7/9 from Finishing Line Press, New Directions, Phoneme Media, University of Calgary Press and Curbstone Books.
July ‘24: A Fledgling Journal No More
We’ve completed our first volume, there’s a new featured chapbook poem, and we’re starting to look for a Poetry Editor to expand what we publish. Check out the editor’s note for July 2024.
Chapbook Poem: Whenua by Nicola Andrews
Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for July 2024, “Whenua” from Māori Maid Difficult by Nicola Andrews, along with a few words from the poet.
Check out new poetry books published the week of 7/16 from Finishing Line Press, Soft Skull, Penguin Books, Regal House Publishing and University Of Minnesota Press.
Check out new poetry books published the week of 7/23 from Host Publications, W. W. Norton & Company, Carcanet Press Ltd., LSU Press, Finishing Line Press, The Song Cave and Wake Forest University Press.
Check out new poetry books published the week of 7/30 from Delete Press, Quale Press, Duke University Press, Seagull Books, Sarabande Books, Michigan State University Press and Alternating Current Press.
Southern Literary Tradition: On ‘Snake Lore’ by Jane Morton
In this essay, C.M. Crockford reviews “Snake Lore” by poet Jane Morton, a chapbook published by Black Lawrence Press in February 2024.
Check out new poetry books published the week of 8/6 from NYRB Poets, Belle Point Press, Finishing Line Press, Black Lawrence Press, Wayne State University Press, Milkweed Editions, Penguin Books, Bloodaxe Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Alice James Books, Mercer University Press and two Editor’s Picks from Coffee House Press and Wesleyan University Press.
Chapbook Poem: It’s okay to say the hurricane has an eye by Amanda Rabaduex
Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for August 2024, “It’s okay to say the hurricane has an eye” from Resin in the Milky Way by Amanda Rabadeux, along with a few words from the poet.
Check out new poetry chapbooks for July 2024 from Seven Kitchens Press, Small Harbor Publishing, Belle Point Press, Orison Books, Variant Lit, Querencia Press, The Poetry Box, Bottlecap Press and Finishing Line Press.
Check out new poetry books coming the week of 8/13 from Querencia Press, Alice James Books, Finishing Line Press, University of New Mexico Press, Harbour Publishing, Knopf, Amistad, TriQuarterly and Red Hen Press.
Check out new poetry books coming the week of 8/20 from Querencia Press, Finishing Line Press, McClelland & Stewart, Zephyr Press, Tin House Books, W. W. Norton & Company, Red Hen Press, Graywolf Press, Wesleyan University Press and an Editor’s Pick from Copper Canyon Press.
Check out new poetry books for the week of 8/27 from Carcanet Press Ltd., Beltway Editions, Finishing Line Press,, LSU Press, Milkweed Editions, Tupelo Press, Guernica Editions, University of Nebraska Press and Texas Review Press.
Resistance and Resignation in Will Russo’s Glass Manifesto
“Glass Manifesto is a meditative collection of poems that call to resist the powers that move the world at times, or resign and offer oneself up to them at others.” Review by PCR contributor, Drishya.
Meet our contributor, Drishya, a writer and artist based in Kolkata, India, publishing under a single name to protest India’s caste system. Read about his writing life and other work.