Best Books of 2015 | Publishers Weekly - Poetry : Publishers Weekly

From the New World: Poems 1976–2014

Jorie Graham (Ecco)

Legions of poets have been influenced by Pulitzer Prize–winner Graham over the course of her four-decade career. Now they can trace the arc of her work through its shifts in aesthetics and ethics, form and function. Even the new poems display a continued willingness to experiment and push her art in new directions.

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How to Be Drawn

Terrance Hayes (Penguin)

Hayes has earned himself a second-consecutive National Book Award finalist nomination with another formally inventive collection that tests his readers' range of emotions. Heavily informed by his visual art background, Hayes makes perception a central motif as he muses on race realities, pop culture, and even Mayakovsky.

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Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems

Robin Coste Lewis (Knopf)

This heart-stopping debut collection caused a stir when it earned an NBA nomination. As Lewis engages with depictions of black female bodies in Western art, she wrestles with constructs of blackness and gender, alienation and self-formation. Her ability to vary form and tone in dealing with such serious content marks this as a fantastically well-rounded collection.

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I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems 1975–2014

Eileen Myles (Ecco)

Myles has long been a steady presence on the New York poetry scene, thanks to her involvement with the Poetry Project and her roots in the queer underground. With the publication of this new and selected volume, which covers her 40-year career, she has become the toast of the town and the poetry world at-large.

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