Poetry Shopping Holiday Guide - Erika Meitner

Erika Meitner's suggestions:

Hanukkah Gifting Guide

I realize that we're on the 4th night of Hanukkah, but here are eight new and amazing books by Jewish poets published in 2010. Both Jason Schneiderman and Julie Carr give us bone-wrenching elegies for their mothers. Jehanne Dubrow offers up poems about her experience as a Navy wife, and Melissa Stein writes of the natural world and a rural landscape infused with desire. Matthew Zapruder pens visceral and heart-rending lyric loveliness, in great contrast to Matthew Lippman's (also profound) hyper-kinetic and often humorous poems. Dora Malech's book is so new (November 29!) that I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I've heard great things about it from the folks in Ohio at CSU. And in honor of Hanukkah and tradition, I've included C.K. Williams' newest (his 17th! poetry collection), which is rife with exquisite imagery.

Order them for the remaining nights, or get them all for your favorite Jewish poet or reader for Christmas (Christmukkah? Hannumas?):

Striking Surface by Jason Schneiderman (Ashland Poetry Press)

Hot off the press: Say So by Dora Malech (Cleveland State University Press)

Stateside by Jehanne Dubrow (Northwestern University Press)

Rough Honey by Melissa Stein (American Poetry Review)

Sarah--Of Fragments and Lines by Julie Carr (Coffee House Press)

Come on all you Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder (Copper Canyon)

Monkey Bars by Matthew Lippman (Typecast)

And my one big-press pick:
Wait by C.K. Williams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)


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Erika Meitner is the author, most recently, of Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial, 2010), and the forthcoming Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls (Anhinga Press, 2011). She teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Tech.