This Is Poetry Volume 5: Poets of the Northeast took me a long time to read. I chewed the poems, rolled them around my tongue, savored them. Some collections I can read through in a day, one poem running straight through to the next. I couldn’t do that with this. I found myself reading three or four poems and setting the book down and letting them settle into my mind and stomach. They are a lot to take in.
Michele McDannold has put together the best collection of poets that I’ve read since the reater issue 3 from Wrecking Ball Press and that came out in 1999. As a lover of poetry it was exciting to read these poems, but as a small press publisher it’s totally thrilling, knowing there are poets like these out there submitting work. I’m hoping some of them will find me.
Every poet here stands out and yet they all fit together perfectly. Is it their northeastern roots that give them a singular overhanging feeling, or is it the editor’s careful eye and arrangement? I don’t know, but something magical has happened here. Place would seem an important aspect of a book called Poets of the Northeast, and it is, but it’s not the crux of it. While we move around from mountain fire lookouts north of the border to New York City after 9/11, from bartenders who quote Chuang Tzu to Army vets who just need a chance, it is not place that matters but hope. Hope runs through these poems and through this book— it’s not about living in the northeast, it’s about how to live in the world.
This Is Poetry Volume 5: Poets of the Northeast is available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/northeast/FEBW764V7G2VDJIEIB47KROK
Peter J. Kahn is from Wisconsin. He is a better fisherman than writer but generally gets skunked doing either. Peter is the editor at Dead Prince Books.
