š± 7 Recent Poetry Collections that Make Me Feel Alive
Hello and welcome to Pleasure Reading. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and this is a podcast about the pleasure of reading, where I share curated reading lists, author rankings, chats with my bookish friends and more. If you too take pleasure in reading, I hope that you will subscribe and share the show with a friend. Cheers to your next best book. Hello, and welcome to Pleasure Reading, a podcast about the many pleasures of reading, including curated lists of my favorite books.
Amelia Hruby:I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, coming to you at the very start of March 2025. You can probably hear the inklings of allergy season in my voice, but the books I wanna talk about today are bringing me so much life. And I needed to tell you about them right here at the March before spring gets into full swing, before everything gets busy and bustling. I feel like these few weeks we have at the March before the spring equinox, when you can tell that winter's coming to a close, but the buds aren't quite popping through the soil yet. Right?
Amelia Hruby:Like, it's still a little too early to plant my early seeds where I live, but I have longer days. I have better weather and I can feel my mood shift. And when I'm in the middle of that, nothing hits like a poem. I have to tell you, I love reading poetry in these late, late, late winter, early, early, early spring moments, this liminal space between the seasons, because I think that a perfect poem really captures those liminal times. Because I think part of what makes something liminal is like you can't quite put words to it.
Amelia Hruby:It's not this or that. Right? It's in between. And I think poetry is a way of being with the in between of language sometimes. So in this episode, I wanna tell you about seven recent poetry chat books that are just making me feel alive right now.
Amelia Hruby:As I look to spring of this year, all of these books have come out in the past two years. So 2023, '20 '20 '4, or one of them is actually out literally this month, March twenty twenty five. And I have been enjoying them, carrying them with me, appreciating them for the past months, weeks, and years now. So let's go ahead and dive in to our list of recent poetry for this spring. I want to begin with a book that was sent to me by a friend, a new friend who had just learned that I was living in Nebraska and wanted to send me this Nebraska poem that she had recently encountered online somewhere.
Amelia Hruby:And so that book is by Sophie Klahr, and it's called Two Open Doors in a Field. In this collection, we see Sophie's experience driving across the country while listening to the radio. And with her, we encounter her feelings, we encounter the land, we encounter the music that's coming in off these FM and AM airwaves, and there is a real like love affair with Nebraska in this book, even though the book takes place all over The US. I wanted to share the opening poem with you because that is the one that had me immediately ordering this collection. So it's called Driving Through Nebraska Listening to the Radio.
Amelia Hruby:Dawn on 101.5 The Fever. Sometimes you're gonna have to lose, it sings. Mice behind the lathe, swallows in the eaves, a rush of bergamot, wild sage drying on the sill, boots already wet from dew. The branches of a huge burn pile lift like still submerged coral. That old dream again, the dream again of the house that isn't.
Amelia Hruby:Why don't you admit, you said, that all roads lead to Nebraska? In the time we spent together somewhere, a few languages died. When you said, it will always be uneven between us, I heard a new word for a field, impossible to measure. If you too love love poems full of Midwestern longing, or Midwestern poems full of love and longing, I think that you'll really love this collection from Sophie Clark. Again, it's called Two Open Doors in a Field.
Amelia Hruby:It was put out by the University of Nebraska Press and I will link to it in the show notes. Up next, I will just stick with my road trip theme and recommend a poetry collection that I have talked about before on this podcast and that is instructions for traveling west by Joy Sullivan. I love this debut collection and I love that a road trip also motivates this or the poems in this collection. So during the pandemic, Joy Sullivan left the man that she was planning to marry, and she sold her house, quit her job, and drove west. If you wanna hear me talk more about why I love this collection so much, you can head back to my twenty twenty four reading faves and flops episodes because this was one of my top books of the year last year.
Amelia Hruby:But for now, let me just say, I recommend it highly if you love road trips, if you love love poems, if you love self love poems, you're definitely, definitely gonna wanna get a copy of Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan, and it's the perfect collection to kind of carry you into spring and through the summer. Okay. Speaking of summer, up next, we have a collection about Geminis and Gemini season, which happens in early summer, and this one is Gemini Gospel by Bianca Alyssa Perez. This book was the winner of the host publication's chapbook prize in spring twenty twenty three, and this poet was introduced to me by my friend, Cecily, of typewriter tarot. Cecily has an amazing podcast of her own called Your Creative and Magical Life, And there's actually an episode of that show with Bianca, so highly recommend checking that out as well.
Amelia Hruby:But in the meantime, I'll tell you that what I love so much about this collection was how it explores the process of self discovery rooted in the poet's own identity and lineage of spirituality and her Latina roots. There's definitely a lot of ancestry in this book. There's a lot of magic. There's just a real, like, depth to the poems that I found so refreshing while also, like, lingering. There's something about it that really, to me, also suits this sort of late winter, early spring moment.
Amelia Hruby:The moments when we're really looking at things like down to the bones, like the bare bones of winter, but also being inspired to see what takes root and comes next. So let me read you a few of my favorite just lines from this collection. This stanza comes from a poem called Waiting for the Rumble of a Border Crashing Down after Audre Lorde. And here are a few lines that really stand out to me. I am a woman past midnight, walking home, whispering to the fear on my back that I won't die tonight, not tonight.
Amelia Hruby:It doesn't want to listen. I am a pink lip gloss woman, who, in a fit of anger and shame, will wipe my lips harshly on a bar napkin, because a man stared too hard, asking what dirty words I can moan in Spanish. I am a woman begging not to be devoured, a generation of women waiting for the silence of a blunt edge. It feels wrong to stop reading a poem halfway through, but I want to entice you to get your own copy of this book and to finish reading that poem and all the others in the collection. I also love the cover of this book, how it's designed.
Amelia Hruby:It's just really beautiful in pink and red with a rose and a snake, And it just feels like a perfect poetry book for the start of spring. So that one again is Gemini Gospel by Bianca Alyssa Perez. Up next, I will offer you another beautifully pink poetry book. This one by a friend of mine. So next I am recommending Recurring Characters by Evan Chelsea.
Amelia Hruby:This collection is a story about the scripts that we tell ourselves we may have to follow through life. The ones we have a hard time letting go of and those moments we focus on tuning out everything else, maybe to our own detriment. I love Evan's kind of really poignant, but also flippant tone throughout the book and just ability to take us right into a moment, like so clearly and so cleverly. So let me read you the first stanza of this poem called pillow talk that I think encapsulates Evan's, like, hilarious and also, like, pitch perfect tone in this way. So here's the first stanza of pillow talk.
Amelia Hruby:While I'm in bed with a boy that won't kiss me, my roommate is fucking James Franco. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. He really won't kiss me.
Amelia Hruby:Like, I literally laugh out loud when I read this. And I'm like, okay. This is great. I need to know what's happening. I need to read all of these poems.
Amelia Hruby:I mean, I have read all of them, but I hope you're feeling like you need to read all of them. And I hope that you get a copy and that you do. Let's see if I can find another stanza that I want to share with you. I think that probably my second favorite is the opening of the poem pearls before swine. Here's how it goes.
Amelia Hruby:If a girl loses her pearl earring in your bed while you fuck her, give it back. Even if you find it months later after you have broken up again and again and again, give it back. Okay. And then one more line that, really hit me when I read this. I think I think Evan and I just have some life experiences in common.
Amelia Hruby:But either way, there's this poem called The $10 Poem. And the opening line of this poem is, you pay $10 for parking and you want to cry. And, let me tell you, I have paid $10 for parking and cried about it in my car in the past. So if you
Amelia Hruby:could relate to any of these things, if you have ever paid too much for parking and totally overdrafted your account
Amelia Hruby:and panicked, welcome to my life. If you have ever slept with someone and then found their earring months later, if you have ever wanted to read a poetry collection reflecting on what it's like to live in Los Angeles or any other big city in The US circa 2014, this is definitely the collection for you. That is Recurring Characters by Evan Chelsea. And as always, it's linked in the show notes. And in fact, for many of these books in this episode, I've linked directly to the poets websites or their independent publishers so that you can purchase right from the source.
Amelia Hruby:And speaking of the source, my next two books are ones that I actually received advanced reader copies of from the poets themselves. So the first of those is Amoraboros by Amelia Kaye. This was out with Kerpunct Press at the end of twenty twenty four. And I have to tell you the, like, blurb of keywords for this collection really just pulled me in because it says it's poetry that is experimental, feminist, and corporeal. And I was like, yes, yes, and yes.
Amelia Hruby:Give me experimental feminist poetry about the body. Thank you. I love it. So amoroboros is, I believe, a word created from amor, love, and ouroboros, which is an image of a snake eating itself. And this collection is comprised of journal entries written during and after an abusive relationship that examines what remains and what leaves in such a toxic love.
Amelia Hruby:This is definitely a collection where you want that content warning that it is about abusive relationships. And if that's something that you're not able to read about right now, this is not the collection for you. But if you are interested in uncovering these kind of cycles of desire and violence, I found this collection to just be so poignant, so powerful, and it's incredibly layered in its style. There's so many references and intricate mentions here, the ways the words weave together. Sometimes we get sort of a narrative.
Amelia Hruby:Other times it's very much just about sound and repetition and some of the passages I ended up reading out loud to try to pace them in my own voice, to try to speak them into existence. Here's just an example of a few lines from the poem Dogma that may bring that to life for you as well. Twenty twelve. I named the stars for you, the seven sisters just like mine, Orion, who appears for my birthday, my favorite star, which hasn't happened yet, she's waiting for the third trumpet. Did you ever lift your eyes to see what I made, a love so big I had to paint the whole night sky with my desire?
Amelia Hruby:Did it ever stagger you, throw you back? Did you ever stop to think to yourself what a gift I've been given? A reticle, a cup, a wolf, a dragon, a million velvet entrances into a heart stream, you would not have wanted for water had you ever stopped to drink. You would have never gotten lost. The whole collection reads like that to me.
Amelia Hruby:And I think it's really, really beautiful if the content is something that you can take in. So again, that is Amoraboros by Amelia Kaye. I've linked to the Kerpunct Press copy in the show notes, which is actually super cool because there are two collections printed in the same book. So if you purchase that one, you also get the articulations by Elizabeth Switaj, which is amazing. And then the other book that I got an advanced reader copy of was Big Money Porno Mommy by Katharine Weiss.
Amelia Hruby:This is a really cool, really confronting erotic poetry collection. So this book, as it says on the back, asserts that desire is worth taking seriously even when it makes us uncomfortable. And I have to be honest, even the cover of this book is pretty uncomfortable. So if you look it up and you're like, woah, stick with it. I know that it's intended to be confronting, and I really appreciated just the honesty of the poems here.
Amelia Hruby:I feel like so often sexuality is either, like, reduced to, like, a super bland identity label or it's painted as, you know, evil or horrible by particular dominant religions. And in my own personal journey, it took me decades of my life to connect with my own erotic nature in a way that felt real and true and honest. And when I did that, I realized it's not all just, like, fluffy and chill and whatever. Like, some of it is weird and interesting and maybe even a little bit gross. Like, bodies are gross.
Amelia Hruby:That's just part of them, and they're amazing and wonderful. So I really appreciated how this collection gets into all of that and does not shy away from all the ways that sex appears, emerges, is immersed in our lives, the good, bad, hilarious, weird, and ugly of it all. So I wanna read just briefly two pieces from this collection. One is literally a sentence. So here's an example of maybe the more, like, kind of flippant tone that runs through the book with the phone sex poem.
Amelia Hruby:I could talk about boners all day long if I had to, but I think in the grand scheme of being alive, I am done telling men they have made me wet. Okay. And then here's the titular poem, Big Money Porno Mommy that explores how sex is also about power. To choose my work of strong legs, to get married and stay that way, to make mistakes, to omit of social currency, of eating well, of good health insurance, to never be pregnant, to move to a different state. And then back again of a loving family, to insist my desires matter, to speak, walk, read, create, to try to tell the truth of my life, to walk through an open door, all of it power.
Amelia Hruby:So if you wanna have a sexier spring, my friends, Big Money Porno Mommy by Katharine Weiss is definitely the collection for you. It just came out in March 2025. So you can go grab it from Game Over Books at the link in the show notes. And then last, but certainly not least, the final poetry collection I wanted to include on this list is Survival Takes a Wild Imagination by Faria Roisin. I got this collection in New York City when I was visiting The Strand, which is one of my favorite bookstores there.
Amelia Hruby:And I have just returned to it over and over and over again over the past year, because it has felt like a bomb during such a challenging time politically, I should say. In this book, Freya writes about her experience as a Bangladeshi woman. She writes about experiencing Islamophobia. She writes about the question of borders of family of love and self love. I feel like she is just on a whole other level in terms of everything that she weaves into her poetry and how it is both so personal.
Amelia Hruby:So political, so individual, so universal all at the same time. And I really can't recommend this collection enough. Like I love all of these books on this list, but this might be the one that I have returned to the most since I bought it. And I think that's because it's full of gems, like the line, go on now, abolish the cop in your head and in your heart, or I count the ways I love myself. I'm furthest from zero I've ever been.
Amelia Hruby:Or even I'm no longer mad that this was my karma. Someone has to break this centuries old grief. So many beautiful lines in this collection, and I hope that you will get a copy of it for yourself. So thank you for taking this journey with me through seven recent poetry books that make me feel alive. As we transition from winter to spring In case you need a brief recollection, those seven books I recommended were two open doors in a field by Sophie Clark, instructions for traveling west by Joy Sullivan, Gemini gospel by Bianca Alyssa Perez, Recurring Characters by Evan Chelsea, Amora Boros by Amelia Kaye, Big Money Porno Mommy by Katharine Weiss, and Survival Takes a Wild Imagination by Faria Raisin.
Amelia Hruby:If you have favorite recent poetry collections of your own, I would love to hear about them. What are your faves? Or if you're a poet yourself, send me your work, please, please, please. I can always use your beautiful articulations of liminal space and everything else. And I'm so grateful to the publishing companies and poets who sent me their books so I could read them and share them with everyone on this podcast.
Amelia Hruby:And of course, to my local bookstores, to my friends who write poems, to everybody who helps get beautiful words out into the world. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That is it for today's episode.
Amelia Hruby:As always, you can find links to all of these books in the show notes, and I do hope that you will purchase your own copies. I have linked, as I said before, to many of the poets and presses themselves. So there are fewer affiliate links in the show notes this time because I want us to promote these amazing people and the work that they're doing. I will be back soon with our first ever guest episode coming up next week. I can't wait to share it with you, but until then, here's to your next best book.