Last year, I read 18 poetry collections and 13 essay collections. Though I write entirely nonfiction, apparently, I prefer to read poetry. I’d like to share with you a dozen poetry books I read in 2021 that I simply loved. Here they are in alphabetical order by author—I loved them all equally, if differently. 

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And So Wax Was Made & Also Honey, by Amy Beeder (Tupelo Press, 2020)

Amy and I met at a writers’ conference in 2002 and then didn’t see each other for 18 years. In early June, we met up at a diner in Albuquerque, her hometown, and she gave me this luminous book. It’s maximalist, almost baroque, poetry. Reading these poems is crawling into the deep, waxy honeycomb of a buzzing hive, getting lost and not knowing how to emerge, and not caring.  

Lake Michigan, by Daniel Borzutsky (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018)

I opened this Griffin Poetry Prize finalist several times before I was able to keep reading, to stay with Lake Michigan to its brilliant, brutal end. It’s that good. That brutal. That relentless. This series of poems about race-based police violence in Chicago is painful to read. And that, it seems to me, is the point.  

Dancing in the Santa Ana Winds: Poems y Cuentos New and Selected, by liz gonzález (Los Nietos Press, 2018)

For four weeks in early 2021, I taught an undergraduate Introduction to Creative Writing course that met four days every week, for more than three hours each day, for a full month. On Zoom. Already into our third semester of Zoom learning at that time, I knew that I had to do something different. And so I had a guest author join my class every single day. I called it “The Daily Writer” and liz gonzález was one of the generous souls who visited us. My students loved the combination of poems and essays in Dancing, and how they danced with each other. So did I.  

Streaming, by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke (Coffeehouse Press, 2014)

This book (most deservedly) won so many awards—at least five—and was a finalist for a half-dozen others. These are such elegant (mathematically so) poems; the collection includes some of my (many) favorites of her (many) poems, such as “America, I Sing You Back.” Allison’s poetry is medicine for ailing hearts, ailing souls, our ailing world. 

A History of Kindness, by Linda Hogan (Torrey House Press, 2020)

I kept this book by my bed all year, reading a poem whenever I needed an emotional reset before going to sleep. I think I will keep it there this year, too, at it serves that purpose even upon multiple rereadings. 

New Moon / Luna Nueva  / Yuninal Jme’tik, by Enriqueta Lunez, English translation by Clare Sullivan (Señal / Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020)

I have submitted my own translations to this chapbook series several times and have received some of the kindest rejections of my life. Since I submit my work often, I’ve received at least one thousand rejections, so you might say I’m a connoisseur of it. I introduced the poet (Enriqueta Lunez) and translator (Clare Sullivan) a decade ago, at a retreat for Indigenous women poets that I co-organized. It is pure delight to see their collaboration come to fruition with New Moon. The poems are excellent; the translations very good; the presentation of the chapbook delightful.   

Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages, edited by Chris McCabe (Hachette UK, 2019)

Dear reader, if this list inspires you to explore just one book of poetry, please let it be this one. It might be the most important book that was published in 2019. (This is not hyperbole.) That said, reading these poems, and the associated translators’ notes, is so deeply sad that I could only bear to read one or two each week. I know that (also) sounds hyperbolic, but to read each entry was to learn about a dying language or culture or set of traditions. The cultural genocide behind the tame phrase “endangered languages” is wrenching. Still, and therefore, you should read this book.

Early Hour, by Michael McGriff (Copper Canyon Press, 2017)

I came upon this book during a stint of reading ekphrastic literature—a habit that I return to regularly. During our long pandemic prohibition on art museums and galleries, I read even more writing inspired by visual art. Early Hour’s poems are all inspired by one painting— Frühe Stunde (Early Hour) by Karl Hofera—a feat that takes my breath away. It’s a lovely collection. 

Forget It!, by Anastacia-Reneé (Black Radish Books, 2017)

One of my dearest writing-sisters published three books in a year. (!!!) I read them all, of course. I reread Forget It! in 2021. I am not recommending this book to you because it’s written by a dear friend, but because this book was the beginning of something BIG. Two cycles of poems in Forget It! became Anastacia’s 2020 solo exhibit at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum: “(Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts.” You can see the exhibit online and watch some of the stellar programming that was part if it. Anastacia has two books forthcoming from HarperCollins. Read Forget It! or experience her Frye Art Museum exhibit and then you will be able to say, “I knew her work when….”

Virgin X, by Natalia Treviño (Finishing Line Press, 2018) 

Did you know that there have been more than twenty thousand sightings of the Virgin Mary? Mexican-Tejana poet and novelist Natalia Treviño is writing poems about many of them. This chapbook is just the beginning. Virgin X delighted me—a non-Catholic, atheist reader—and kept my faith in miracles alive. (At a time when we sorely need/ed them.)

Curb, by Divya Victor (Nightboat Books, 2021)

This is the only book of poetry I read in 2021 that was published in 2021. I am slow. I have a three-foot-long backlog of books-to-read on my bookshelves, not to mention my “Want to Read” list at Goodreads and my long library hold waiting list. I buy new books the day they are published and then more than a year passes before they work their way to the top of my “To Read” pile. But about Curb: WOW. I loved everything about this book: the concept, the individual poems, the GPS coordinates, the physical object of it. Curb dramatically expanded my idea of what a book could contain. It located poems about assault and murder in time and space. Brilliant! 

I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezan Concentration Camp 1942-1944, From the Documents of Jewish State Museum in Prague 1959, most recent edition 1994 (Schocken Books) 

I picked this up from a Little (Giant, actually) Free Library in Carrboro, North Carolina. The poems and stories and drawings broke my heart. Even more heartrending are the notes at the end of the book, explaining in great detail the provenance of each document. The creative work of these lost, murdered children is so moving; the unnamed editors’ painstaking effort to share as much information as possible about the creators of the work moved me even more deeply. I Never Saw a Butterfly was in the children’s area of the Little Free Library; I worried about a small child taking it and then asking their parents to explain the Holocaust to them. I was silly to have worried. Later, a friend told me there is a choral song cycle for children, composed the year I was born, from the book. Thousands of children have performed it. I have to remember that children are brave. That we can all be brave. 

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Wendy Call is a writer, editor, translator, and editor. She has translated two books of poetry, both by Mexican-Zapotec poet Irma Pineda, that are forthcoming in 2022. She co-edited the craft anthology Telling True Stories and wrote the award-winning nonfiction book No Word for Welcome. She lives in Seattle, on Duwamish land, and in Oaxaca, on Mixtec / Zapotec land.