I’m not comfortable using the word “best” on the list - in part because I’m the only person who likes the things he submits. Plus, for me it means I’ve read all the books that came out in 2020 so I can put them on a product level of peanut butter (which seems to be enough). I didn't read them all, or even shut them down - I wish my life made that happen. Still, I would not miss the opportunity to talk about some of my favorite poetry books this year. My column gives me limited space, so apart from books I've ever had a chance to recommend (like “DMZ Colony” or Chessy Normile's debut) that won the National Book Award or the best Chessy Normile debut), here are a lot of collections I can write fully or otherwise feel I deserve more attention.

AFRICAN AMERICAN POETS: 250 YEARS OF STRUGGLE AND SONG, edited by Kevin Young. (Library of America, 1,110 pp., $ 45.). of the ship that stole him ”) through Emancipation, Harlem and the Chicago Renaissances, the Black Arts Movement and the Dark Room Collective, bringing us to the 21st century. As Parul Sehgal notes in his review of The Times, the poems are “subtlely contradictory” within and between periods. Angelina Weld Grimké's portrait of "straight black cypress" as "finger / pointing" symbolizes Gwendolyn B. Bennett's memory of "little palm trees, / Pulling on the clouds / With little pointed fingers" and both symbolize the fingers of Jericho Brown's poems (" dirty meant our filth ”) and Tiana Clark (“ Following my finger / finger by the Niger River building with my blood… red finger pointed at my death ”), was written about a hundred years later. A good guide, a good gift.

ARENA, by Lauren Shapiro. (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 79 pp., Paper, $ 18.) These poems focus on just one evil moment ("I was cutting my hair when I got a call. Then I got it forever"), a reminder of the poet's ability to compose and timer: I was a tree. / I can only understand for now. / I can only understand the present tense. ”



CARDINAL, by Tyree Daye. (Copper Canyon, 57 p., Paper, $ 16.) A small collection of beautiful poems about departure (departure, return, recollection) - "cardinal" as a bird but also as a guide. These poems are harmonious, one theme appearing as a line in another, and echoing poems in general, borrowing lines from Whitman, Lilke, Larry Levis. "The dead know / the work they have done, / and if they do not notice their hands / they will remain in that state." Among the poems are what appear to be family portraits (slightly obscure, such as memories), which deepen the feeling of the book as an art and archive text.