So we often have friends releasing new books. And we love to recommend them. Here’s our book recommendations. We try to get it done every Saturday but we are busy so we may have missed a few.
Weeds and Stars By Lisa Rosenberg From the celestial to the ground beneath our feet, from supernovas and nebulas to dandelions and the beautiful mundanity of the everyday, Weed and Stars houses us in the living herbarium of its vibrant poetry.— Ariel Francisco Henriquez Cos, Judge, 2025 Hilary Tham Capital Collection PRE-ORDERS ONLY AT THIS TIME. RELEASE DATE IS APRIL 21.
About to Disappear by Robbi Nester About to Disappear is a poetry collection that explores the limits of ekphrasis; that is, descriptions and reflections on works of art in order to expand their meaning. The book is separated into four sections: Ex Nihilo, Adaptation, Law of Attraction, and Ad Nihilum. The first and final sections-translated as “from nothing, returning to nothing”-act as bookends. Ex Nihilo includes poems about imagination, optics, creation, and and development; while poems in the final section, Ad Nihilum, are about trauma, unmaking, climate change, and catastrophe. Poems in the middle sections are about artistic, psychological, and physical transformations, and natural history and community. Artworks included are from contemporary artists-as well as such artists as Vermeer, Grant Wood, John Singer Sargent, and Edward Hopper.
It’s Easy to Lose Your Breath by Kevin Risner Anchored by the first years of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kevin A. Risner’s debut full-length poetry collection It’s Easy to Lose Your Breath is both introspective and outward-facing, rippling from the poet’s inner life into family and friendships, work and unemployment, suburban life, and wildlife. The collection draws on daydreams and nightmares, small animals’ housecalls, and memories of childhood. Concerns about health and emotional well-being intermingle with the worries about what climate change will bring in a world hellbent on maintaining the capitalist status quo. Though not without that unbeatable Rust Belt hope, this is a collection that sits with the heavy weight of what the powers that be have done to the natural world and what it might take for ordinary people to survive in the years and decades to come. “It’s Easy to Lose Your Breath reflects on our collective quarantine year with a burgeoning hope in the face of dread’s drumbeat. It’s no surprise that Kevin A. Risner’s poems snap with a pulse from The National because both yearn for what could be (or for what could’ve been) amid bedraggled reality. ‘I’m the only human who weeps for this lone songbird,’ Risner writes, but his poetry connects us. We all feel, and weep, with Risner through his poems. With our hearts on our sleeves, we struggle as one with ‘[t]he knowledge that I can try my best and I might still fail.’ The year 2020 separated us, but It’s Easy to Lose Your Breath brings us together.” – Mitchell Nobis, author of The Size of the Horizon, or, I Explained Everything to the Trees
The Weather Inside by Stevie Edwards In The Weather Inside, Stevie Edwards measures the emotional atmosphere of a mind navigating bipolar disorder, complex PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, and alcoholism while forging intimacy and creative resilience in a rapidly declining world. Both as someone who has struggled with mental health and as a feminist approaching middle age, Edwards interrogates parenthood and marriage: What forms of nurturing survive when traditional roles and certainties do not? Can bringing children into a collapsing world still be an act of hope? When your partner does not want children, where should you divert your surfeit of love? The poet grieves, “I am chanting the name of a daughter / my husband doesn’t want / enough, the child I’ve spent years / not being sure I deserved.” This fiercely honest and intimate collection offers a vision of adulthood shaped by the capacity to inhabit an embattled inner world. With clarity and dark wit, Edwards probes the uneasy border between solitude and connection, asserting the relationship between caring for oneself and caring for the wider world.
Where is the Green? by Carolyn Donnell The author/artist has paired her original artwork with her poetry in a way that makes you wonder which inspired the other. She writes both structured and unstructured verse, some poems as short (and deep) as haiku and others that meander from thought to thought, taking you along with them. There’s even a shaped poem…no spoilers, I’ll let you discover the image in the words for yourself.
to where i began no foundation to stand on, always feel like the sand beneath my feet is going to give out; will i be falling through stars until i land in the right universe? i can't shake the feeling that this is the wrong one, no one seems to understand me here; and no one has ever loved me the way i needed to be loved— no one seems capable of appreciating me and all of my magic, perhaps i just need to let the sand be washed away; maybe the ocean can take me back to where i began and i can find my home and these restless bones of mine can find rest. -linda m. crate
falling into dreams the song the crickets sing beneath the silver moon may enchant you to dance in dew covered grass,
where the distant cries of coyotes and owls hooting will chime in;
as you're dancing insomnia will leave your bones—
you'll enter the house tired, and fall into dreams you cannot remember when you wake. -linda m. crate
from a previous life old books and dust make me sad, i try to give them a new life;
sometimes it is hard for me to be captivated by old stories—
other times i open the page of forgotten stories, and remember something from a previous life;
it opens a portal to my soul which i hope leads home
to my magic and to the mythology of my bones. -linda m. crate
some battles aren't worth fighting dreaming violence sometimes comes natural as breathing,
no one knows the violence required to become gentle;
but i know—
i wouldn't wish it on anyone, but i know the deep magic and all the scars it can leave behind;
yet i also know magic which heals and is kind and full of light and love and joy—
when i feel my fingers curl into a fist i just take my fingers apart and remind myself of the miracle of life,
some battles just aren't worth fighting;
sometimes the best thing to do with the violent dream is walk away. -linda m. crate
from a previous life old books and dust make me sad, i try to give them a new life;
sometimes it is hard for me to be captivated by old stories—
other times i open the page of forgotten stories, and remember something from a previous life;
it opens a portal to my soul which i hope leads home
to my magic and to the mythology of my bones. -linda m. crate
parasites and monsters the treasure i buried was my magic, figured only the worthy ones should be able to find me;
a best friend of twenty years forgot me
so i see no need in offering all the prettiest songs of my magic to any stranger—
if you want to know me then you can deal with these walls,
until i feel safe enough to show you my shiny things;
i used to be openly vulnerable but i learned i needed thorns and walls to protect me from the parasites and monsters. -linda m. crate
what would their water be? a world without water isn't one where i imagine much could thrive,
perhaps machines would roam the earth;
but what would their blood be made of and what stories could they forge or tell?
what kind of world would they live in?
could they see any beauty in color or value anything that once lived?
what would their water be?
i wonder what they would do or what they would dream of, what would they be?
i wonder what language they might speak and what variations to those languages there might be, and where did all the water go? -linda m. crate
what would their water be? a world without water isn't one where i imagine much could thrive,
perhaps machines would roam the earth;
but what would their blood be made of and what stories could they forge or tell?
what kind of world would they live in?
could they see any beauty in color or value anything that once lived?
what would their water be?
i wonder what they would do or what they would dream of, what would they be?
i wonder what language they might speak and what variations to those languages there might be, and where did all the water go? -linda m. crate
meander into an adventure;
perhaps i'll see a butterfly or a deer will lock eyes for a second with me before his or her white tail disappears into the trees—
maybe i will see giant trees, or go play in the creek;
you never know where a road to nowhere may lead you— and as long as the day is full of light and the skies are blue, i say adventure away;
no one wants to end up in a horror story. -linda m. crate
whispers in the dark the shadow people roam around, some of them are friendly and kind i am sure;
but i am always weary of anything that whispers in the dark—
i remind myself i was born at night, the moon and stars knew my face before the sun ever did;
so i try to tell myself perhaps in the darkness there can exist more than monsters and parasites. -linda m. crate
this world too full of nightmares moonlight blessings shimmering in silver, pink, red, orange, purple, blue, yellow, green, indigo, and any other color she so chooses;
the moon is a rainbow hearted woman like me—
she taught me that i am beautiful in all of my phases, and always full of light even when i don't feel whole;
she always watches over me when i am sad or happy and she never judges my moodiness—
she always kisses me with compassion,
a cool hand to soothe all the things which burn me up in this world too full of nightmares. -linda m. crate
song of magic lifted by faery wings the butterfly seemed to remember how to dance among the flowers,
and i watched those wings sweep pollen off the lilies as it flew past;
making the clovers dance with more food for the honey bees—
i watched the orange and black wings of the monarch,
and i think he or she watched me back for a moment probably wondering what the giant creature was doing;
but i couldn't help but be caught up in the song of magic. -linda m. crate
something more practical dripping ink would make me so impatient,
people have talked about gifting me quills;
but i think i can write perfectly pretty letters in cursive without them—
i can see them just sitting behind the plastic, gathering dust;
the ink never used—
so get me something more practical or pretty because a girl could never have too many jewels or crystals. -linda m. crate
shapeshifting the animal within sometimes shifts, at times i can be a happy dog;
other times i am an angry wolverine ready to slash you with my claws—
sometimes i am the happy crow hopping around in autumn or shrieking with joy to see my friends, who must collect all of the shiny things;
other times i am a melancholy little cat sitting by the window feeling forgotten—
sometimes i am the turtle slowly crossing the road,
other times i am the impatient hare who can wait no longer as i speed walk past you;
but mostly i am just me regardless of the animals within. -linda m. crate
an invitation the blank page is an invitation,
always i want to see what she'll bring me;
sometimes it is memories and other times dreams and others there are worlds i scarce remember from another life—
but every blank page excites me because the chance of something new, an adventure i've never known waits and beckons for me;
and so i must go—
to lose everything weighing me down, and to gain everything i was meant to know. -linda m. crate
once i got it daisy chains were never something i learned how to make,
i've always wanted a flower crown of real daisies;
but no one ever thought to teach me these things and my mother's cure for everything was watching a tutorial online—
i have always learned better from someone showing me,
i could mimic the movement of their fingers and learn how to do it my own way;
but it is easier if the person is actually there—
because i am curious, and i need to ask questions; i need to see it more than once but once i got it i won't forget. -linda m. crate
meander into an adventure roads to nowhere where i can go slowly,
the skeleton of who i was hypnotic melody whispers in my ear, tries to make me worship an entity whose purpose i don't trust or know;
i ignore the song no matter how pretty it may be
don't need a religion willing to sacrifice me—
i had one of those growing up, and i have left it behind;
those bones aren't something i would wish upon anyone—
the skeleton of who i was warns me that this music is just a spell which could undo me. -linda m. crate
