Since June we've asked our team for their reading recommendations to celebrate a diversity of voices.
This month, our fourth recommender Listener Poet Ravenna Raven offers a selection of favorite poetry.
September 2021 image & reviews by
Listener Poet Ravenna Raven
When My Brother Was an Aztec
by Natalie Diaz
Poetry
Two poems in this collection that I especially love are "Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation" (which you can watch Diaz read here) and the hyperbolic "No More Cake Here," where the poet imagines a fantastical party full of symbolic imagery alluding to the family's dynamics, and with my favorite line: "I sliced the cake into ninety-nine pieces."
Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary
by Harryette Mullen
Poetry
I've loved reading about Mullen's "tanka walks" and how she developed this daily practice of walking and writing to capture moments of her day. She's adapted her own style from the traditional Japanese tanka, noting that "each outing, however brief, becomes an occasion for reflection."
Slow Lightening
by Eduardo C. Corral
Poetry
These poems are magical to hear aloud. The images pour off the page in both Spanish and English as the poet explores history, family, love, and longing. These lines have stuck with me for years:
"Once, borracho, at breakfast,
he said: The heart can only be broken
once, like a window."
More on the blog
