Best Poetry Books of 2010 - David Wolach

David Wolach's selections:

Armies of Compassion by Eleni Stecopoulos (Palm Press)

revv. you'll--ution by Brenda Iijima (Displaced Press)

Spectre by Mark Lemoureux (Black Radish Books)

Black Life by Dorothea Lasky (Wave Books)

Gaze by Marthe Reed (Black Radish Books)

Neighbor Procedure by Rachel Zolf (Coach House)

Neighbor by Rachel Levitzky (Ugly Duckling Presse)

The Name of This Intersection is Frost by Maryrose Larkin (Shearmans Books)

Green-Wood by Allison Cobb (Factory School)

House Envy of All The World by Simone White (Factory School)

The City Real & Imagined by Frank Sherlock and CA Conrad (Factory School)

Chapbooks
Zine Chapbook by Lara Durback (No No Press)

Meet Me Under the War Angels by David Brazil (OMG! Press)

*As with probably all of us, I don't consider this so much a Best Of list in the normative sense--such valuations make little sense to me--but a list of books I've read this year and that have been published this year that I love and want to share with others. That is, after all, the spirit with which No Tell Motel Motel offers this important public service. Even so, this list could easily be three times as long and include titles such as the new Wave edition of The Book of Frank, a book I would have included had I not done so last year with the Chax version, a different book; or any title from Essay Press; and so forth. What releases me from feeling too badly about it is that many of the writers before me listed books I would have otherwise. Really shows that there's not too much good poetry in the world, like some have grumbled. No, just not enough space-time. Finite universe and alienation, bad combo.

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David Wolach is editor of Wheelhouse Magazine & Press and an active participant in Nonsite Collective. A former union organizer and performing artist, Wolach's new book of poems, Occultations, has just been published through Black Radish Books (2010). Other books include the multi-media transliteration Prefab Eulogies Volume 1: Nothings Houses (BlazeVox, 2010), a chapbook from the full-length Hospitalogy, title of the same name (Scantily Clad Press, forth), and book alter(ed) (Ungovernable Press, 2009). New poetry and essay can be found in or is forthcoming from journals such as Augabe, Jacket Magazine, Try Magazine, and 5_Trope. Wolach is professor of text arts, poetics, and aesthetics at The Evergreen State College, and teaches as visiting faculty in Bard College's Workshop in Language & Thinking. Wolach's current work involves touring with the Evergreen-based Performance Research Group, an experimental composition/performance collective now performing original work alongside Kenneth Gaburo's opus, Maledetto. For reading/performance dates, visit David at http://davidwolach.blogspot.com/