laura_sackton's reviews
168 reviews

The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya

Wow, this was incredible. So brilliant and so good in so many ways. I stayed up way too late reading it because I couldn't put it down, and I'm still digesting it. I've enjoyed Shraya's other work, but this novel is...just a masterpiece. Will be writing a longer, thoughtful review at some point, but do yourself a favor and pick this up. Shraya writes about the realities of the internet like no one else I've encountered. Plus fame, music, art, brown womanhood and friendship, friendship between women...there is just so much in this book. And the way the whole thing unfolds is so smart, so seamless, it's heartbreaking and sometimes funny and so painfully real. Can not rave about this one enough.

If This Is the Age We End Discovery by Rosebud Ben-Oni

The structures of these poems are complicated, the kind of visual that I find extremely difficult to read. I still really appreciated this one, and it's one I can see myself going back to. It's not the kind of poetry I can just look at and absorb I definitely have to sit with it. Very inventive and intriguing nonetheless.

The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void by Jackie Wang

So weird? What did I just read? I didn't understand most of it, but I loved it. Strange and beautiful and so full of dream logic but also about capitalism, friendship, prison abolition, writing. So many lines that just felt true and beautiful even if the context was a strange dream landscape that made no sense. Really creative, bold, inventive, compelling poems.

Some Are Always Hungry by Jihyun Yun

Wow. I'm not sure I've ever read poems that describe, and use food to make meaning, the way Yun does here. Stunning. I found it hard to put down this book once I picked it up. Wanted to underline everything.

Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss

This book took me a long time to read, but I loved it. Really appreciated the way the book felt like a memoir, the poems exploring different parts of Seuss's life, in vaguely (though not strictly) chronological order. I think the thing that stood out most, though, was the humor here. Seuss very explicitly doesn't take poetry too seriously. Many of the subjects she writes about are serious, but there's a constant thread, throughout the book, that's poking good-natured fun at the poetry, poets, writing, her own writing. It's never mean or cynical or anything like that. Rather, it feels very tender. There's a flowing, easy quality to these poems, and I think Seuss's sense of "this is poetry, we're not doing life-saving surgery here" added to that. At the same time, there are so many absolutely breathtaking lines. So many beautiful moments that made me pause. An energetic, moving collection.

Finna: Poems by Nate Marshall

Brilliant work. Felt playfully rigorous at times. I found myself reading poems over and over and over, there were so many that shifted even as I read them, so many layers of music and meaning. Will be coming back to this one.

The Tradition by Jericho Brown

Brown's mastery of form and language is something else. These poems are so sharp, so precise, they cut such a fine, sure line, right through the heart. I had to read each one many times over, once or twice to just let it sink in, and another time or two to take in all the layers and rhythms. This is the sort of poetry I wish I'd been able to find in high school, when I was falling in love with poetry. In many ways, it's formal. There's an economy of language that I associate with the very best poetry; every word has weight. But it's poetry of the present moment. Brown is writing about queerness and Black identity and desire and the ways bodies move around in the world. It's ordinary, horrifying, ordinary life stuff. It's vital. His work is playful but restrained. I'm not good at describing poetry, so I'm rambling, but this collection is masterful. I could read it over and over and over.

The 'duplex' poems--a form Brown invented himself that combines the sonnet, the ghazal and the blues--are especially remarkable. I got chills reading them.

When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Díaz

Brilliant. The way Díaz structures her poems is just so good, I don't have the words for it. The line breaks take my breath away. The love poems and the brother poems were my favorites. I often judge how much I like poetry by my physical reaction to it; my heart was racing reading these. Just phenomenally good.

You're the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened by Arisa White

Many of these poems are inspired by various terms for gay in different languages, and they are really something. The way White plays with different layers of meaning is amazing. And the lines are so sharp, this is a book I'm glad I own because I'm going to want to read these over and over. Really startling work.

Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals by Agha Shahid Ali

Really cannot explain how much I love this book. Book of my life.