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kpdoessomereading's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
jmiae's review against another edition
4.0
I confess I am not a great reader of poetry. My favourite poet is John Keats, and while I believe he is a wonderful poet and I also love reading his marvellous letters, I'm aware that my selection is based off of a limited pool of contestants.
I am also not a great reader of American poetry. But this book was a gift, and I am well behind my reading challenge for the year. That was the premise for my initially picking up this collection.
Then two unrelated things happened that made reading this more meaningful than I could have anticipated. First, two days after I started reading this my grandmother passed away. Second, the same morning she passed, NPR's Life Kit podcast released an episode about coping with grief during the holidays that featured none other than Tracy K. Smith, the former Poet Laureate who also edited this collection.
And so I devoured the rest of the poems in this collection because it seemed like an outlet, and it was. Reading poems, so different from prose, is like reading a feeling. And this collection contains many poems about loss and sadness, so it was, somehow, miraculously, the perfect book at a perfect time for me personally.
I am also not a great reader of American poetry. But this book was a gift, and I am well behind my reading challenge for the year. That was the premise for my initially picking up this collection.
Then two unrelated things happened that made reading this more meaningful than I could have anticipated. First, two days after I started reading this my grandmother passed away. Second, the same morning she passed, NPR's Life Kit podcast released an episode about coping with grief during the holidays that featured none other than Tracy K. Smith, the former Poet Laureate who also edited this collection.
And so I devoured the rest of the poems in this collection because it seemed like an outlet, and it was. Reading poems, so different from prose, is like reading a feeling. And this collection contains many poems about loss and sadness, so it was, somehow, miraculously, the perfect book at a perfect time for me personally.
katulka2's review against another edition
5.0
I really like this as a snapshot of US voices circa 2018. Standouts for me are Layli Long Soldier, Eve Ewing, Matt Rasmussen, and (always) Natalie Díaz.
A note: The Pegasus (now closed) of Terrance Hayes’ poem in Pittsburgh was a place I claimed too.❤️
A note: The Pegasus (now closed) of Terrance Hayes’ poem in Pittsburgh was a place I claimed too.❤️
mezekial's review against another edition
5.0
A brilliant, encapsulating anthology. Reading it feels exactly as described by Smith in her introduction: a lightning-speak of America, an intimate experience with fifty unique poets who consistently tread new ground, whether in the Pegasus night club or the massacre of Dakota men in civil-war era Minnesota, small-town Alabama or rural-college Indiana. Every poem in this collection felt fresh and exciting, with loose connecting threads jumping between the pages like following a color hue chart.
This is, by all means, a page turner. You will not want to put it down, and when you do its stories will continue to echo.
This is, by all means, a page turner. You will not want to put it down, and when you do its stories will continue to echo.
e_flah's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
4.0
American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time was an excellent collection of poems addressing a variety of topics. I discovered a lot of new poets whose work I really resonated with, which was lovely.