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Restaurant by Holly Pester (Fitzcarraldo, £12.99)
Beginning with a sequence of prose poems in which the narrator embarks on a counter-epic mission to open his own cafe, Pester’s second volume creates a meditation on the nature of desire and frustration. The time of the game remains strong, as does its flexibility of language, the use of language as a tool in the face of difficult work situations, unlimited loans every month (“Even registering my egg is a disaster”) and the increase in life’s problems. Looking at the demands of aging parents, the joyous desperation of dating, the “troubling problem” of work and the possibility of being a parent, Pester’s speaker finds solace in the third place of the cafe, everywhere there is a meeting and a melting pot. “This is where the inspiration begins, this is where the drama begins,” he says. “I’m ordering some coffee to honor the normal life.” Ambitious and persuasive, this bold collection marks Fitzcarraldo’s entry into the arena of contemporary poetry.
The Acrobat by Wisława Szymborska, translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh (Faber, £12.99)
A small selection of Szymborska’s works, featuring both intimate and contemporary poems that explore themes of endurance and wonder. Based on the turbulent history of 19th century Poland, Szymborska describes life during and after the war, documenting the violence of war as well as moments of courage and family struggle. “After every war / someone has to fix it,” he reminds us. “Someone had to push / the garbage on the side of the road / so the carts full of corpses / could pass.” With clear wisdom and deadpan humor, these poems celebrate the strange in strange times. Rooted in the pain and joy of everyday experience, Szymborska’s poem affirms “a common miracle: / that many known miracles happen.” The book ends with his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in 1996, in which he praised the eternal wonders of the world: “It seems that poets will always have their greatest work.
Volvelle by Rachael Boast (Picador, £12.99)
The fifth set of Boast is named after a circular chart designed to calculate the cycles of the sun and the moon, the fifth set of Boast offers a variety of poems about self-love and the movement of the body through time and space. The collection is preserved by a series of poems that show the slippage and change of the body – “the body as the weather – some of the bodies – / the image of the body – the double body – water” – which speaks of the time of division and running. Several poems are set with images of “senseless war”, complaining about “houses that look like bones” and “crowds / running away from uncontrolled explosions”. Boast finds relief in the community, especially other artists, poets and filmmakers whose work is linked to his writings. For Boast, the role of the poet is one of repair: “things fall apart / and must be repaired”. Throughout this collection, restoration is achieved through constant attention and vigilance, “like a deer in a line / may stop to listen // to the whole world”.
The Cost of Knowledge by Victoria Chang (Corsair, £16.99)
Chang’s latest collection continues to engage with art. Although not directly understood, these poems respond to the works of Pablo Picasso, Joan Mitchell and Hilma af Klint, among others, creating a space for Chang to consider language, grief and our relationship with history. The poem is strongly influenced by the image of a eucalyptus tree cut down in the poet’s street, leaving a sad void. “I learned that when grief leaves its body, / what is left is not what it once was”, writes Chang, whose new poems are composed of lovers who “balance the living / the dead”. The collection is adorned with vintage photographs depicting scenes of Chinese American life in the 1800s and early 2000s, each stitched with colorful thread; like the accompanying poems, it expresses “the desire // to combine dead things to create something new”. One such achievement is the long central poem, which tells the story of the deportation of 263 Chinese Americans to Eureka, California, in 1885, a short piece that answers one of Chang’s most important questions: “What shall I do with // all these seams. A history that keeps growing.”
Speak Blue Streak by Lila Matsumoto (Monitor, £15)
Through episodic prose poems, Matsumoto’s second collection tells the story of the years that took place in the USA in the 1990s. The narrator is a newcomer, who suddenly finds himself “living on a movie called America”, surrounded by “high productions that I have never heard of”. Matsumoto relishes the element of off-kilter language, chewing on the strangeness of words and unfamiliar phrases: “Riding the gun, crossing the buck, blowing the wind.” While his music and playing are the obvious rewards, he also offers a deep meditation on themes familiar to his art, asking questions about how his personality is formed in response to and resistance to the culture around him. He wrote: “At this time I was facing many problems in my life like the computer games I used to play when I was a child,” he writes, the words of confusion found in these poems. In the end, the speaker takes the test to become a US citizen, proof that a clear vision of culture comes from an outsider, looking inward: “Now that I had left prostitution, communism, and genocide, I was, finally, an American.”
