Stanza Break: May reading list and June update

Happy June, poetry friends,

First of all, I want to share that the terrific journal Yalobusha Review published three of my Psalms in their new issue earlier this month. You can read them here. I definitely encourage you to read the rest of the issue as well. Ryo Yamaguchi’s poems are such a delight as a group. I love the way they each begin with one of the three primary colors (and is that a shout-out to Red Balloon Bookshop?). I also enjoyed Sara Lupita Olivares’s poems, which remind me a bit of Marie Howe or Etel Adnan, at least formally.

Psalm 14 is a companion to Psalm 53, which was published in Sink Review a couple of years ago (here). The text of each Psalm in the original is almost identical, but the flavor of each Psalm is a little different. I wanted to honor that in my version—one a bit more melancholy, the other a bit more fire-and-brimstone. Psalm 12 is one of my favorites of the OG Psalms—I love the metaphor of God’s promises being refined like silver—so this group in YR is a lot of fun for me.

As I mentioned in my last dispatch, my reading in the last month has included a steady stream of YA and middle grade books. I feel a little like I’m scrambling to catch up—with publishing trends in young people’s literature, with the reading I want to do for myself, reading for Stanza Break, reading friends work, and so on—that I didn’t actually finish reading much that I’m at liberty to write about here (yet!). But here are my May lists.