1. The Odyssey by Homer, Trans. by Emily Wilson
(6 Rave, 1 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“Does the translator have a thoughtful, comprehensive vision? Does she have the skill to sustain it? Does she chart a coherent course between often mutually exclusive virtues such as literalism, musicality, clarity, beauty and readability? And, most importantly, does she tell the story well? In the case of Emily Wilson’s smart and exciting new Odyssey, the answer to all those questions is a resounding yes … Wilson’s language is fresh, unpretentious and lean. Though there are plenty of finely wrought moments, she isn’t looking to gild the poetic lily but rather to emphasize the emotional arc of the story, engaging readers first and foremost with the plight and character of Odysseus. Relying on this forward motion, she is able to create real suspense where other translations make the reader glaze over … It is rare to find a translation that is at once so effortlessly easy to read and so rigorously considered. Her Odyssey is a performance well-deserving of applause.”
–Madeline Miller (The Washington Post)
*
2. Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
(6 Rave)
“What is so extraordinary about this collection is its lyricism, its humanity, and its urgency … The brave nature of these poems is not only in calling out a country for its lack of empathy, but also in the very visceral way that sex, disease, and death are used to confront the reader …an historical commentary, a scientific document, a personal narrative, and a formal poetics … Smith uses every tool of craft at a poet’s disposal to deliver powerful, urgent, deliberate, crucial poems. Don’t miss this book.”
–Chelsea Dingman (The Rumpus)
*
3. Half-Light: Selected Poems by Frank Bidart
(5 Rave)
“The publication of Half-Light: Collected Poems, 1965-2016 gives readers a chance to see how Bidart, ill content merely to ‘say what happened’ in prefab stanzas, performs a poetry of ’embodiment’ first by adopting personas — most famously those of the necrophiliac murderer … The scale of these poems is cinematic and their reach reveals the extent to which Bidart’s classical mind is adept at plucking allegorical tales and figures from Western literature and history on which he can graft his own life story, and also ours.”
–Major Jackson (The New York Times Book Review)
*
4. There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé by Morgan Parker
(3 Rave, 1 Positive)
“For Parker, there is no divide between what can and cannot exist as poetic language. Her lyrical poems are often arranged in couplets, with occasional internal spacing to dramatize temporal and idea shifts. The images are often clear and direct and sometimes surreal, punctuated with social commentary, raw feelings, and wit. Parker’s brilliance is found in her ability to complicate the gaze on black womanhood. By depicting the varieties of experience, from Hottentot Venus to Michelle Obama, Parker is able reclaim black womanhood as beautiful in its entirety.”
–Christopher Soto (The Nation)
*
5. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
(3 Rave)
“At more than 400 pages, it registers palpably on the lap, a pleasant anchor through an autumn afternoon …a case of form following function, since Oliver is primarily a writer about the natural world …Oliver’s poems have mostly been inspired by her long walks within the woods and shoreline of Provincetown, Mass. … Like Wordsworth, Oliver deftly communicates physical movement in her poems, even though many of them ostensibly celebrate the serenity of standing still …poems are often an exercise in ecstasy, charting those moments when the temporal is touched by the transcendental. We are not surprised to learn that she is a fan of Walt Whitman… a closer reading of Oliver’s poems reveals them as more than pastoral portraits rendered in cheerful pastels … One finishes Devotionswith the sense that Oliver’s poetry isn’t a denial of our troubled times, but an answer to them.”
–Danny Heitman (The Christian Science Monitor)
**
Graphic Literature
1. Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke
(9 Rave, 7 Positive, 1 Pan)
“…[a] brilliant graphic memoir … a wondrous panel-by-panel archive of the interplay between her rapacious intellect and her expansive imagination … It’s Radtke’s quietly erudite, observant language that grounds her intricate and dramatic drawings. But maps, photographs, medical charts, newspaper clippings, and a free-floating Sharpie embedded in the almost 300-page book enhance the storytelling as they surprise and delight.”
–Lisa Shea (Elle)
*
2. Boundless by Jillian Tamaki
(7 Rave, 1 Positive)
“Boundless uses a constantly varying visual treatment that keeps readers on their toes and mixes and matches artistic styles with a proliferating set of genres, from speculative fiction to domestic drama to magical realism. If a reader comes to Boundless with assumptions about visual storytelling, Tamaki will confound them … Boundless continues her efforts to explore the full lives of women and, subtly, the societal expectations placed on them … In Boundless, Tamaki tackles subtle shifts in emotion, identity, and power. Her visual talent has long been obvious. This solo collection now proves her strength as a storyteller in her own right and that, of course, the drawing is central to that process.”
–Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (The Atlantic)
*
3. Hostage by Guy Delisle
(7 Rave)
“Three months, one room. This is, to say the least, extremely challenging territory for a cartoonist. Somehow, though, Guy Delisle has turned André’s account of his weeks of hell into a gripping visual narrative … In Hostage, it’s the treacherous landscape of the mind that Delisle determinedly makes his own … Looking at these cells within a cell, every corner of André’s prison depicted from every possible angle, you’re able to absorb the terrible accretion of time in a single glance – at which point you suddenly grasp just how well the comic serves this particular story. All this darkness and claustrophobia shouldn’t be exhilarating. The fact Delisle makes it so is yet another reason why he must be counted as one of the greatest cartoonists of our age.”
–Rachel Cooke (The Guardian)
*
4. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris
(5 Rave, 1 Positive)
“…this extraordinary book has instantly rocketed Ferris into the graphic novel elite alongside Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel and Chris Ware. You see, she’s produced something rare, a page-turning story whose pages are so brilliantly drawn you don’t want to turn them … Breaking away from the panel format customary in comics, Ferris’s densely-imagined, crosshatched images explode with a visual freedom I’ve not seen in a graphic novel. And she uses that freedom to give us, well — everything.”
–John Powers (NPR)
*
5. Cartoon County by Cullen Murphy
(4 Rave, 2 Positive)
“The art in Cartoon County is as lovingly reproduced as the anecdotes, showcasing the strips as well as the artists’ preliminary drawings, war sketches, and other pieces. The senior Murphy’s loose, expressive watercolors are particularly striking and a surprising contrast to the realistic renderings of his strips … he appreciates the artists’ bonds, bonds that extended to filling in for each other when illness or accident kept one of them from the drawing board. Most of all he relishes the father-son connection as they collaborated on Prince Valiant…The book is a testament to the strength of that partnership.”
–Dan Wasserman (The Boston Globe)
