Reviews by Erin Murphy
Poetry Editor
by Diamond Forde
Scribner Books, 2026
The epigraph of the proem in The Book of Alice by Diamond Forde is a line from rapper Doechii: “Let’s start the story backwards.” And that’s what Forde does boldly, bringing us into the present time—and the future—even though most of the collection takes place in the past. You could start with the Notes section in the back where Forde explains that this book’s project is to tell the story of her grandmother, Alice, through the lens of the “time-worn copy of the King James Bible… she left behind” in order “to recenter the oft-nameless Black women necessary to creation, to ask what happens when we focalize on the Black narratives whitewashed from the most canonized text of all time.” In these notes, you’ll learn that “callin’ the hogs” is a Southern idiom for snoring, that “mbuki-mvuki” is a Bantu word that means “to take one’s clothes off to dance freely,” and that the poem “Origin Story: The Father” is “based on a family legend in which [Forde’s] great-grandfather, a white man, pretended to be a door-to-door salesman to secretly meet with and sleep with [her] great-grandmother.” You could then flip back to “Family Tree”—a visual poem—to learn about the people you’ll meet in this journey. But don’t. Don’t start at the end. Resist the temptation to write your own genesis for this story. Let there be “hips wide as lampshades,” a daughter “taffeta-curled & thrown into cast-iron summer,” and recipes calling for catfish, cornmeal, and “a hankering for home.” Let there be a God who acknowledges “a son named Emmett” who “had his face cracked into many mirrors &/millions stopped to see themselves.” Let there be the poet who redirects the narrative in “Poem in Which I Should be Writing About Cain, but I’m Tired of Writing About Death” and “I Can’t Write About the Ocean Without It Being About Slavery.” Let there be these closing lines from “Another Damn Body Poem”: “What I wouldn’t have given then to shed my skin, to/ emerge new & pink-gleaming, reach for the translucent shell/ of my old self, gatored elbow & pebbled knee—dimpled chin &/ fat gut—hapless—how to make her happy except by plastering/ her on every page I think is mine—doesn’t every body deserve/ to feel wanted?” Let yourself, reader, be “torn apart like fruit” as you “drink, & drink, & drink” this brilliant, powerful book. Let it stew. Let it smolder.
by Kelli Russell Agodon
Copper Canyon, 2026
Kelli Russell Agodon’s Accidental Devotions is the sexiest poetry book I’ve ever read. If sexy poetry seems like an oxymoron, see the image of “her leg/ over my hip bone” and the account of post-marital romp that “feels like it did before you signed a contract” and this fantasy of cosmic seduction: “I want/ to get drunk and wrap my legs around/ the universe as if it had a waist/ and kiss a blazing star.” These are bisexual poems, and by this I do not mean that all the poems are about bisexuality. I mean that they are tone-fluid, communing between pathos and humor, pain and playfulness. These poems put “the holy in melancholy.” They don’t fit easily into neat little categories any more than the speaker who squeezes herself “into a box of what America calls normal.” I use “speaker” loosely because many of the poems are written in second person, with the “you” representing both speaker and reader, blurring yet another boundary in “the brilliance/ of being multitudes.” IMO, there’s nothing sexier than a sense of humor, so it tracks that I found myself laughing out loud every few pages. Examples: “Show me where it hurts should be a T-shirt/ we wear into midlife,” “My Arrhythmia Makes Me Believe I’m Always in Love,” “Poem After Realizing This Is the First Time in Years I Haven’t Failed My Doctor’s Mental Health Test,” and the epigraph from “Young Sirens”: “Twitter: If you had a mermaid phase as a kid you’re probably bisexual now.” In one my favorites, “Alexa, Why Am I Falling Apart?”, Agodon fuses mental health and modern technology in a hilarious yet heartbreaking interaction with a digital assistant, prompting responses like this from Alexa: “I’m sorry, I don’t know ‘Why Am I Falling Apart,’ but/ I do have ‘Everybody Hurts’ by R.E.M. on Prime Music,” “You do not have ‘Why Am I Falling Apart’/ on your shopping list. Do you want me to add that for you?” and “Did you want me to order glue, duct tape, zip ties, or a broom?” The opening line of “Try This” is “Imagine there is no wrong way to love.” We can replace love with write, read, think, be. Imagine there is no wrong way to be. In poem after poem—devotion after devotion—, Agodon does just this, exploring “how vast we are.” Musing on black widow spiders, she likens the poem to “a ransom note/ to an old self.” Accidental Devotions is a love letter to a future self—a manifesto for living lustfully. It will leave you hot but not the least bit bothered.
Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds
Susan Rich, Editor
Raven Chronicles Press, 2025
What’s the collective noun for birders? A murder of birders? If so, the Merlin app has launched many murders of birders. If you’re one of them, you will love this analog version: Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds, edited by Susan Rich with bird notes by Stephanie Delaney, original artwork by Hiroko Seki, and a foreword by avian ecologist and conservationist Ursula Valdez. Full disclosure: I have a poem about inebriated robins in this collection. But even if I didn’t, I’d still recommend this gorgeous anthology to new and longtime birders alike. Despite the title, Birdbrains is not exclusively about Washington or even West Coast birds. As Rich observes in her introduction, “Birds live where they want, paying little attention to borders.” If you’re more into actual feathered things than literary works, you may be relieved to hear that these pieces are short, most fewer than twenty lines—like hummingbirds on the page. And the notes are detailed without being intimidatingly scientific. In the “interesting tidbit” accompanying my poem, Delaney writes, “Have you noticed a Robin tilting its head as it stands alert on the grass? It is listening. Yes, the American Robin can hear worms. They can also see the soil moving, indicating worms close to the surface.” The poems and prose will make even familiar birds new. In her poem about the Western Meadowlark, Diane Seuss compares her bird to a “[f]olk/ artist, alone in the dome-nest, built/ in the hoofprint of a cow.” Naomi Shihab Nye wonders what the Chukar Partridge could teach humans about coexistence: “chuck chuck chukar chukar your/ chant of peace, maybe your heart has 144 hopes. We need your wisdom/ drenching us in our desert.” The late poet Jennifer Martelli, who died just before Birdbrains was published, writes of growing jealous of the shy Swainson Thrush: “I envy… how you power nap in flight./ I envy your lush life under the conifers, how/ you are like these trees: so shy, that their crowns/ won’t ever touch. Listen: I heard your song and/ though you are shy, I love how you sing even so.” There is much to envy in this anthology, both writing style and first-hand experience with remarkable bird species. You’ll want to flock to your favorite bookseller to order Birdbrains for yourself and for the murder of birders in your life.
