K. C. STAR ANNOUNCES 2014 NOTABLE POETRY BOOKS

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

****Denise Low and Catherine Anderson read Friday, Nov. 12, 8 pm The Writers Place of Kansas City. Low will read from her new book Ghost Stories of the New West: From Einstein’s Brain to Geronimo’s Boots.


****Woodley Memorial Press of Washburn University publishes Ghost Stories of the New West, by Denise Low. Prose and poetry about disembodied spirits who still inhabit the frontier. Low, 2007-2009 Kansas Poet Laureate, is an award-winning writer with a sense of history and deep geography. Available at the Raven, Jayhawk Ink, and Prairie Lights, as well as Amazon.com. ISBN 978-0-9817334-9-4

For the Maiden Aunts and Bachelor Uncles

For an uncle called Big Miller
killed by Lenape Indians in Ohio.
For Lenape uncles killed by Big Miller.

For Cherokee aunts killed by Jackson’s soldiers.
For soldiers drowned by Water Monsters—
the antlered giant fish in deep rivers.

For the cowboy Edwin who died of typhoid.
He lost his chance to gamble, brawl, sin,
and be redeemed.

For the nameless toddler great-uncle
who tipped the boiling coffee pot
and scalded himself to death.

For Great-Aunt Annie who passed
amid a great rush of breath
taking also her sister’s Christian faith.

For those dead from snakebite, pox,
frostbite, horse kick, stampede, cholera
gunshot, grass fire, and bad water.

For their sunken burials on grassy hillsides.
Dawn sunlight erases chiseled names
and embellishments of marble wild roses.