Copper Canyon Press,U.S.

The poems in Air inhabit the state of being consciousness, delving into the nature of solitude and the pleasures of the human organism. Cinematic, nostalgic, and unabashedly raw, Daniel Halpern’s latest poetry collection, Air, hinges on the human experience. The normalities of life are recounted through rich, intimate and often confessional exposition, drawing on people and places, insects and birds, and on the conscious exploration of musings that are both dear and curious to the author. Halpern writes to French actresses, insomnia, old lovers, a pot of stew, friends from past and present. As he reminisces on once-realities and questions his own observations—the duplicity of memory—these poems transcend form and the world becomes anew. Air, like each of our breaths, proves that poetry is quite literally all around us.

Witty, humorous, and oh so tender, Accidental Devotions reminds us that in the end, life is a brief devotion of moments—beautiful, accidental, and always—gone too soon. Kelli Russell Agogon’s latest collection, Accidental Devotions seeks to find meaning in a world lit by screens and haunted by ghosts—both real and digital. Blending humor with vulnerability, we embrace the beautiful messiness of relationships, of aging, of being human. Explorations of desire, technology, spirituality, aging, and even Emily Dickinson gather here, echoing like birdsong through a chapel made of missed calls. Sharp and playful, Accidental Devotions is for the quiet rebels and devoted readers—for those who carry ashes to the beach, ask Alexa for guidance, keep Emily Dickinson’s book on the nightstand, or fall in love mid-sentence. With queer tenderness, and an ongoing devotion to desire, these poems make room for grief and joy, pleasure and struggle. The result: a dazzling, defiant field guide to staying human.

Steeped in loss—of climate and childhood, of fathers and friends—Winter of Worship finds survival in our tender human connections.Told through an ever-queer lens, Kayleb Rae Candrilli’s fourth collection, Winter of Worship, is a patchwork of the pastoral and the “litter swirled around us”—a pandemic, global warming, a hometown hit by storms of fentanyl and Oxycontin scripts. A book of elegy told in ghazals, “Marble Runs,” and other forms, these poems reckon with loss: of climate, of fathers, of youth. Candrilli writes, “We are so young / to know so much about life without / our friends.” Steeped in the grief of these losses, Winter of Worship finds healing in the smallest memories: Nokia phone cases, jalapeño gardens, pop flys, 67 Dodge darts, YouTube mixes “all electronica and / glitch step.” We also find survival in our tender human connections: an iPod tucked into the jacket pocket of a drifter, a kiss pressed to a partner’s forehead, a mother calling her child by their chosen name. From the cornfields of Pennsylvania to the streets of downtown Brooklyn, these poems refuse to forget, refuse to lose “an ounce of gentleness.”