The Kansas City Star includes poetry among its priorities in reviewing, a rare opportunity, through the year, to learn of new works by contemporary versifiers. I feel lucky to be able to contribute as a regular reviewer and as a compiler of this list. Nine of the one-hundred 2014 Notable KC Star books are poetry:
Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems by
William Stafford
(Graywolf), Blood Lyric, by Katie
Ford (Graywolf), Book of Hours by Kevin Young (Knopf). Citizen:
An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf), Faithful
and Virtuous Night by Louise
Gluck (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Put This on, Please by William Trowbridge (Red Hen), Wolf
Centos by Simone Muench
(Sarabande), Woman With a Gambling Mania by Catherine Anderson (Mayapple), Collected Haiku of Yosa Buson translated by W.S. Merwin and Takako Lento
(Copper Canyon).
Compilers of this list are: Darryl Levings (KC Star books editor), Steve Paul (former
KC Star books editor and editorial staff), Brian Burnes (KC Star columnist), Edward M. Eveld (KC Star); and regular KC Star reviewers: Kevin Canfield, Liz Cook, Jeffrey Ann Goudie,
Anne Kniggendorf, Denise Low, Christine Pivovar, Sebastian Stockman and Steve
Weinberg. University of Missouri-Kansas City English Department members consulted are: Hadara
Bar-Nadav, Christie Hodgen and Whitney Terrell. The list includes fiction, nonfiction, and verse. See the entire listing of 100
Notable Books with commentary:
http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/article4431734.html#storylink=cpy
