5 Unforgettable November 2023 Poetry Releases
With fall getting chillier, poetry readers are cozying up in their favorite nooks, chairs, and coffee shops. After the autumnal equinox’s reminder to embrace home and to draw inward, the world around us might be feeling smaller and more snuggly. However, this month’s poetry releases open us up to expansiveness and universality — from a collection harkening back to Genesis to a collection that considers all of humanity as its audience. These five selected books publishing in November play with mythology, natural imagery, and poetic legacy to confront big themes and widen their scopes.
Theology of the Broken by Catherine Faurot
Release date: Nov. 1
Catherine Faurot reimagines the classic story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in Theology of the Broken, her second collection. The book begins with the author observing flowers that have landed on her porch, then delving into the creation myth to explore ideas of seasonality, separation, and reunification. Theology of the Broken is a journey that spans Adam and Eve parting to them reconnecting, taking them through many different landscapes and emotions on this tumultuous path.
Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate
Release date: Nov. 7
Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate – which has earned praise from Poet Laureate Ada Limón and a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly – is a testament to the late and brilliant poet whose career spanned nineteen books. Throughout his career, Tate won the National Book Award, the Yale Younger Poets Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. This collection gathers some of his best, most representative work, plus includes an introduction by Terrence Hayes.
Paper Banners by Jane Miller
Release date: Nov. 7
In Paper Banners, Jane Miller considers the highest personal and global stakes: Desire, suffering, life and death, the environment, and the role that art plays in all of it. Reading Paper Banners is like stepping into a ruminating and unrelenting internal dialogue, which enhances the book’s sense of both urgency and intimacy. Miller also invites figures outside herself into her collection, addressing many of the poems to family members and friends, as well as other writers both alive and dead.
Please Do Not Touch this Exhibit by Jen Campbell
Release date: Nov. 7
Playfulness and horror meld together in this collection from Jen Campbell, whose first book was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards. While undergoing IVF, the poet reflects on her own childhood, showcasing and interrogating the ways we mythologize our own histories. This juxtaposition impacts not only the book’s sense of time but also its sense of place — the book takes the reader through both hospitals and Victorian circuses, causing them to draw unexpected connections between these eerie settings and what happens within them.
People Not Things: Love Poems and Paintings for Humanity by Genesis Be
Release date: Nov. 14
Genesis Be is a long-standing and passionate activist whose work in her communities has been covered by The New York Times and VICE. Now, with her debut poetry collection, People Not Things: Love Poems and Paintings for Humanity, the multi-faceted creator explores the intersection between activism and art. Be sees both words and illustration as a medium to embody the fullness of her identity and humanity as a queer Black woman, with each work infused with both the hardship and joy that come with claiming one’s freedom.
Happy reading!
