Here are some poems from the first half of 2024 that shone a light on a diversity of subjects for me in their examination of grief, impermanence, environmental destruction and more.

‘Given to Rust’ by Vievee Francis

Still, I did once like my voice, the way it moved / through the gap in my teeth like birdsong in the morning, / like the slow swirl of a creek at dusk. Just yesterday / a woman closed her eyes as I read aloud and / she said she wanted to sleep in the sound of it, my voice.

Vievee Francis is the author of four books of poetry and her most recent is The Shared World (Northwestern University Press, 2023), which includes ‘Given to Rust’. She is currently an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.

‘To This I Come’ by Erin Marie Lynch

From official records of few deaths along the march— / From these few, each a name their family knew— / From the dash, which elides— / From the prairies where Elisabeth died, in another / new home, in another new state—

Erin Marie Lynch is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California. Her writing appears in Gulf Coast, DIAGRAM, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. ‘To This I Come’ is from her collection Removal Acts (Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org).

‘Nostalgia’ by Matthew Minicucci

You walked in front of me, just above the cochineal stars, bright bald ember, fashioned still spear. I think of nothing else but you. It’s true. It’s the worst part of forgetting, all this remembering.

Matthew Minicucci is the author of Dual (Acre Books, 2023), among other titles. He is also the recipient of a fellowship from the James Merrill House and an assistant professor at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

‘The Economy’ for Terry Tempest Williams by Ariana Reines

My friend Terry writes about water / And land, mother and brother / Like a singer. I once despaired / To her that the only endangered / Species I had managed to speak / On behalf of up to that moment / Was myself. This seemed squalid / And narrow to me. Terry said it was real / Territory. I blinked melancholy / Into the seething night / Like a spotted owl in the eye / Of a security camera /

Ariana Reines is a poet and playwright from Salem, Massachusetts. She holds degrees from Barnard College and the European Graduate School, with additional graduate work at Columbia University and Harvard Divinity School. Reines is the author of four poetry collections, most recently A Sand Book (Tin House Books, 2019), winner of the 2020 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and longlisted for the National Book Award.

‘Dear Moon’ by Taylor Byas

between us. Me, thirteen and thinking I needed you / to speak back to me. Back then, I skipped my wishes / to you like stones over water. I slept in the overhang // of mornings that relieved your shift.

Dr Taylor Byas is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus, an Acquisitions Poetry Editor for Variant Literature, a member of the Beloit Poetry Journal Editorial Board, and a 2023-24 National Book Critics Emerging Fellow. She has won several prestigious poetry awards and published two poetry chapbooks. Her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times from Soft Skull Press, won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award and the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry.

‘Melancholy’s Mirror’ by Robert Cording

I’d like to say I’m getting by and getting on with life, / but the latter is a stretch. A tapeworm of grief / has been eating my insides, eating the spirit / of who my son was, his lively mind, his courage / to accept the darkest contradictions. / I’ve sat here for hours, my companions these two / thoughts – my son is dead and done with me; / how can I know what my son’s life was to him, and him alone?

Robert Cording has published ten collections of poems, the most recent of which is In the Unwalled City (Slant, 2022). A book on poetry, the bible and metaphor, Finding the World’s Fullness, is also out from Slant. He has received two NEAs in poetry. He has won two Pushcart Prizes in poetry, and his poems have appeared in publications such as the Georgia Review, Southern Review, Poetry, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, Image, The Common, Agni, New Ohio Review, Orion, and Best American Poetry, 2018.

‘Quick Flesh’ by Hilary Plum

Daughters bear daughters, a dark roof to / the orchard’s mouth. There’s a sound caught / like a soft piece of lung or a phrase in the old / language for a hand hot on the back, / the back to another cold wall.

Hilary Plum is the author of five books, including Excisions, a volume of poetry; Hole Studies, an essay collection; and the novel Strawberry Fields. Recent work has appeared in the Cleveland Review of Books, the Chicago Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and on the podcast Index for Continuance, which she co-hosts with Zach Peckham.

‘Fifteen’ by Victoria Adukwei Bulley

now watch this older girl stop / & throw her day out with the dust / & turn blue, too. // This whole impermanence thing is deceptive. / Looks lifelong, actually, to me / still stuck here moulding Mason jars / of words to preserve him with

Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer, and artist whose work has appeared widely in publications including the London Review of Books, LitHub, and The Atlantic. She is the winner of an Eric Gregory Award, and her critically acclaimed debut poetry book, QUIET, won the Folio Prize for Poetry, the John Pollard International Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.

‘Sex Talk’ by Lesley Wheeler

every winter for skating, creating warty ice ungroomed by Zambonis, / grass snagged in its skin like ingrown hairs. My mother kept looking // at me, her eye a sideways question mark, tricky liquid liner painted / along the lid, pupil unrelenting.

Lesley Wheeler, Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, is the author of the forthcoming Mycocosmic, runner-up for the Dorset Prize, and five other poetry collections. Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds and the novel Unbecoming; her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Poets & Writers, Guernica, Ecotone, and Massachusetts Review.

‘Come wilderness into our homes’ by Daniela Danz (Translated from the German by Monika Cassel)

come rising sea levels / up over our shorelines both the developed / and the undeveloped the homey / lowland areas wash / jellyfish into our soup bowls / and ramshorn snails into our hair / as we swim in each other’s direction panicked / with our yearning for one another

Daniela Danz is the author of four books of poetry, Serimunt, Pontus, V, and Wildniß, two novels, Lange Fluchten and Türmer, and the libretto for “Der Mordfall Halit Yozgat,” an opera by Ben Frost based on one of the ten murders carried out by the right-wing NSU. Danz was named poet laureate of Tübingen in 2012 and has received numerous grants and awards, including the 2019 German Prize for Nature Writing, the 2020.

Monika Cassel’s poems and translations from German have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Poetry, The Georgia Review, Guesthouse, and Poetry Northwest, among others. Her chapbook Grammar of Passage (flipped eye publishing, 2021) won the Venture Poetry Award and she was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Press inaugural Rhine Translation Prize.