With April showers, poetry flowers: Three vibrant collections

To readers who love poetry, the art form appears as vibrant and unexpected as a swath of wildflowers running along a highway. Favorite books and poems take root and bloom in memory, resurfacing when needed, just as spring does every year. New collections offer the opportunity to explore a variety of insights, ideas, and discoveries.

April – which is National Poetry Month – is a time to celebrate this genre, which existed before written language and serves to anchor us to the past and who we have been. Poetry also reflects who we are now and what we might become.

Three new books by contemporary poets offer fascinating glimpses of 21st-century America, the challenges we face, and how poetry can help us re-imagine ourselves. 

Fatherhood’s complicated emotions

One of the most anticipated poetry collections this spring is “Above Ground,” by Clint Smith. While many readers may know Smith for his prose – he is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the bestselling narrative nonfiction book “How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America” – he is also an award-winning poet. His first collection, “Counting Descent,” won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. 

In “Above Ground,” Smith recounts how fatherhood has changed his life, from the time he first saw a sonogram of his son and later his son’s early delivery, to the birth of his daughter, and how he and his wife have juggled the challenges of parenting. 

Often, the speaker in these poems sounds as if he could be any father celebrating his child’s first smile, struggling to assemble an electric baby swing, and sometimes wrestling with the thought “that we are welcoming you into the flames / of a world that is burning. / Some days, I am afraid that I am / more kindling than water.” That sense of universality, conveyed through evocative, well-crafted writing, immediately draws the reader in with details anyone can appreciate and understand.

Other poems seem wonderfully familiar yet rich with distinctive details, as when the speaker describes aspects of his family history, how he knows he married the right woman, or dancing in an aisle of the grocery store with his son strapped to his chest.

Smith’s thoughtful, considered tone gives the work much of its power, even when he writes about the contradictions and inconsistencies in life, historic and enduring injustices, and the fears that many Black parents feel about the safety of their children. Those poems become a bridge for understanding and connection because they distill experiences and language down to their essence. 

This potent, memorable collection also illustrates how poetry can appear simple yet contain subtle music and rich imagery, while giving voice to complex emotions. 

The power of Black women

Mahogany L. Browne’s “Chrome Valley” was published in February to rave reviews. The bold, insistent work is the 10th collection of poems by Browne, the inaugural poet-in-residence of the Lincoln Center in New York City and the founder and publisher of Penmanship Books. Browne is also an award-winning performance poet who has released five LPs of her work and served for 13 years as the Friday Night Slam curator and Poetry Program director at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in Lower Manhattan.

Browne’s background as a performance poet can be heard and felt throughout this collection, which uses direct, fearless language to present a prismatic picture of the Black female experience in America. That rendering includes generations of women whose strength shaped their families and communities. “We praise their names / & the hands that write / Praise the mouth that speaks,” Browne writes of previous generations.

Browne’s own mother, Redbone, appears often in these pages, as the speaker navigates girlhood, young love, and the complexities of relationships.

The joy in some poems is palpable, as in these lines from “The Rink”: “the couples skate / hip to hip / side to side / footwork intimate as a kiss.” Other pieces portray harsher realities, such as the occasional shock when friendship turns into a slap in the face, hair pulling, or fighting. 

“Redbone got a spine for the world,” the speaker notes in “Redbone Reflection.” That fortitude is necessary, as the poem demonstrates, to deal with the challenges of racism and the struggle for social justice that many Black women face. Browne shows how even a cul-de-sac, which should represent safety, means “generational trauma”:

an heirloom mausoleum 

belts wrapped around knuckles

hot wheel tracks mimic skin reaper. 

“Chrome Valley” may startle some readers with its fearless, sometimes brazen language and unvarnished depictions of life. Those who embrace Browne’s candor and rhythms will immediately be transported from their lives to the world she describes, where a legacy of suffering and the fear of losing sons weigh heavily, yet do not defeat the strength of Black women. 

Small gems of observation, wry humor

“Musical Tables,” published a few months ago, is the latest collection by Billy Collins, who has long been a fan favorite, drawing crowds to readings pre-pandemic. He was the United States poet laureate from 2001-2003, developing the Poetry 180 program for high schools during his tenure, and he served as New York’s poet laureate from 2004 to 2006.

What makes Collins “the most popular poet in America,” as he has been dubbed by The New York Times, is his signature mix of dry humor, perceptive observations, and accessibility, punctuated by constant surprises.

In “Musical Tables,” Collins presents 125 short poems, some of which feel like haiku – a three-line form originally from Japan – while others present brief snapshots or postcards, with just enough text to convey a mystery, question, or discovery. 

The brevity of the poems will remind some readers of their earliest encounters with poetry, when surprising visuals and phrasing made the genre seem almost magical. 

Collins often juxtaposes unlikely creatures or situations, as in “Highway,” where a person walking along notices an ant headed in the opposite direction, or in “Aa,” where “At school, / always seen together / capital and small, parent and child.” 

By allowing himself very little space to turn a phrase or challenge an expectation, Collins makes those feats more effective and resonant. He also highlights the value of unencumbered thoughts as he covers a range of topics, from the effects of wind and rain, to being home during the pandemic, to how certain sounds highlight the passage of time.  

His approach underscores the importance of free association and creativity, even in the midst of hectic days. The best of these poems also demonstrate how poetry can change and challenge how one sees.

In the poem “Spacing,” for example, drivers stopped in Los Angeles traffic ... 

look like they are pretending

to be from earth,

and not from some other planet

where this kind of thing never occurs.

While the works of Smith, Browne, and Collins are vastly different, they all challenge perceptions, broadening and deepening the landscape of poetry. They remind us why this art form matters. 

Elizabeth Lund's "Un-Silenced," a collection of poems about women dealing with domestic violence, was published earlier this year.