Recommended Summer Reading - Jamison Crabtree

During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.


Jamison Crabtree's recommendations:

Ghost Lights by Keith Montesano (Dream Horse Press, 2010)
I’ve dug his first-book interview series for a while now, but it’s the series of nocturnes that I’ve seen in various journal that have me really excited to read this book.

Black Eyed Heifer by Shelly Taylor (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010)
Another first book that I’ve been waiting for. Southern gothic is perfect for the summer.

Ideals Clearance by Henry Parland, translated by Johannes Goransson (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2007)
“Sure / the ocean is like a woman / despite oil stains and drift canisters.” In seven lines Parland can delight and frighten in ways that would take most other writers an entire book. I’m going to be rereading this all summer long.

treason by Hédi Kaddour, translated by Marilyn Hacker (Yale University Press, 2010)
A translation of his poem “The Bus Driver” was included in an anthology I’d read a few years back but I couldn’t find any book-length translations of Kaddour’s work at the time. This selection pulls poems from three books published between 1989 and 2000 and it’s definitely worth checking out.

hurry home honey by Sawako Nakayasu (Burning Deck, 2009)
“…water too watery but & it’s summer it’s summer but & I still can’t & I still can’t & I still can’t let it go…” These are the love poems that you want to read during a heat wave.

Scary. No Scary by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean, 2009)
There’s a good reason that this book keeps showing up on recommendation lists. Poems that manage to simultaneously unnerve and charm are rare.

For The Fighting Spirit of the Walnut by Takashi Hiraide, translated by Sawako Nakayasu (New Directions, 2008)
The title comes from a play on words, where the word ‘suffering’ in Japanese is formed by inserting the word ‘death’ into the word ‘walnut’. Partly a book on poetics, partly a book about the way we interpret loss; there’s a speed and liveliness to these prose poems which make them a true pleasure to read.

Gurlesque edited by Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg (Saturnalia Books, 2010)
Eighteen amazing poets. You just can’t go wrong with this book.

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Jamison Crabtree’s poetry appears (or is forthcoming) in Anti-, Poor Claudia, Spork Online, LIT, Best New Poets 2009, and elsewhere. He sometimes lives in Tucson, Arizona