Evie Shockley's Must Read List

Evie Shockley's choices:

This is my wholly incomplete list of books I want to read (or finish reading) that I can think of right off the top of my head while most of my "library" is in another state (of the U.S., not of being), in no particular order -

Zong!, by M. NourbeSe Phillip (Wesleyan UP) -- An amazing poet tackles the Zong Massacre (a Middle Passage horror) with the fragment.

Open Interval, by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (Pitt) -- If you are named for a kind of star, and you are a poet, you are destined to write about your life in terms of astronomy.

Hughson's Tavern, by Fred Moten (Leon Works) -- A poet who remembers vinyl records fondly and in context, not to mention with interesting line breaks.

Matadora, by Sarah Gambito (Alice James Books) -- The kind of graceful ferocity you'd expect from a woman who fights bulls successfully.

Irresponsibility, by Chris Vitiello (Ahsahta Press) -- This poet gives language no quarter, nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.

My Zorba, by Danielle Pafunda (Bloof Books) -- Poetry from a poet who is always surprised (thus surprising) and never boring, even when she's cutting (or biting) her nails.

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Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006) and two chapbooks. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, Tuesday; An Art Project, Pluck!, The Southern Review, Achiote Seeds, Studio, and, of course, No Tell Motel, among others. Currently a guest editor of jubilat, she teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.