David Banach

#sealeychallenge Day 31
Kim Addonizio, Exit Opera
This simultaneously sad and funny and entertaining book about endings is the appropriate last entry for my Sealey month.

#sealeychallenge Day 30
Sophie Cabot Black. Geometry of the Restless Herd
The pastoral, with the balance predator and prey, and the equilibrium of use and care has long been a rich metaphor for society, for relationship, and for the little Eden of life we share here.

#sealeychallenge Day 29
Rumi, translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori, Gold
I heard the translator of these classic Rumi poems read some of these a while ago, and was amazed at how they came alive with rhythms you don’t usually hear in the common translations.

#sealeychallenge Day 28
Danez Smith, Bluff
These poems feel even more topical after the recent shooting in Minnesota, and they struggle with how to write poems that feel fresh and do justice to the repetition of events and circumstances that overwhelm us even with just one repetition.

#sealeychallenge Day 27
Anne Carson, Wrong Norma
A new book by Anne Carson is so exciting that I have been saving it for the last part of the Sealey month as a treat for myself, and what a delight it was.

#sealeychallenge Day 26
Tiana Clark, Scorched Earth

#sealeychallenge Day 24
Mark Pawlak. Away Away
These are poems about travel and observation and the in-between spaces we encounter in the going from place to place and from moment to moment.

#sealeychallenge Day 23
Major Jackson, The Absurd Man
As someone who studies Camus, I enjoyed this take on what the absurd artist can be, devoid of another world, devoid of a home, and devoid of objective standards that will justify him.

#sealeychallenge Day 22
Abbie Kiefer, Certain Shelter
This book evokes memories of a vanished Maine, a lost mother, and the way the past still lives in us as we revitalize our homes and ourselves.

#sealeychallenge Day 21
Roberto Harrison, Isthmus to Abya Yala
This is a beautifully produced volume from City Lights Books that includes drawings by the author. Abya Yala is a land of abundance and fulfillment in the language and culture of the Guna people of Panama.

#sealeychallenge Day 20
Blas Falconer, Rara Avis
The title poem of this masterful and deeply felt collection describes the falcons buried along with the bodies of Egyptian pharaohs, reminding us both of the pharaoh and the beautiful rare birds we all carry through life.

Tune in to WSCA 106.1 FM, Portsmouth Community Radio, this Thursday at 8 a.m. - PSNH will be talking NH Poetry with Larry and Kelly, the hosts of "Seacoast Currents"!

#sealeychallenge Day 19
Madeleine Cravens, Pleasure Principle @madeleinecravens
The title of this ...

Read more: https://longer.blue/posts/_qpu8ySC5l

#sealeychallenge Day 18
Oliver de la Paz, Diaspora Sonnets
I know I am late to get on the train fo...

Read more: https://longer.blue/posts/iLFsicquYP

#sealeychallenge Day 17
Silas Denver Melvin, Grit @sweatermuppets
I’ve always loved the language of this poet, the staccato rhythms and the cartwheeling, tire-screeching, donut-driving metaphor switches. These poems, even when describing gut-wrenching realities, are a delight to read.

#sealeychallenge Day 16
Jennifer Jean, Object Lesson
This 2021 volume does the job of poetry, telling the truth and the truth behind the truth, in this case about the sexual exploitation of women. They make the connection between the humanity in these women and our own shine forth so clearly.

between self and other and between being and the nothingness of death, which is always at the heart of loneliness. This beautiful volume will make you feel less alone.
@thesealeychallenge

The scaffolding of the book is provided by studies in loneliness, collections of journal-like entries literary or philosophical, as well as real-life chronicles. The poems have a dreamy feel of isolation and living on that borderline that comes alive in loneliness,

we construct our selves and their isolated subjectivity only in relation to the world and other people. The title of the book is both a good description of this paradox, as well as of Kant’s great work. It is hard for a philosopher not to like a book that has a poem titled “Critique of Pure Reason"

#sealeychallenge Day 15
Catherine Barnett, Solutions to the Problem of Bodies in Space
This is a book about loneliness, about death (of a father and of a friend), about the phenomenology of being alone and of desire, and about that fundamental human paradox:

#sealeychallenge Day 14
Robin Gow, Lanternfly August @robin_gow_poet
This beautiful and well-crafted book takes the lanternfly as an extended metaphor for being trans and for going home to place that is no longer home. I loved this smart and deeply felt book, a highlight of my month so far.

#sealeychallenge Day 13
Anne Waldman, Mesopotamia
I heard a recording of Ann Waldman reading this summer for the first time, and it rocked my world. You can still hear that same urgency and fire in these poems. I pre-ordered the Kindle version, so this is hot off the press.

#sealeychallenge Day 12
Alice B. Fogel, Falsework
These are poems of a mature and wise person asking, as we all must do, how to structure a life within this world when the things we thought might place us and hold us up turn out to be falsework, and we have to find our place again.

#sealeychallenge Day 11
Cintia Santana, The Disordered Alphabet
The powerful sounds and disrupted syntax in these poems push language beyond meaning. There are themes of grief and loss and atomic energy, but the stars of this book are the sounds and where the language leads us.
@thesealeychallenge

#sealeychallenge Day 10
Lydia T Liu. The problem of deer
This chapbook is full of sensory details and scientific curiosity. From the nature of odor and color to figs to monarch butterflies to Snowy Owls, these poems aim to understand, and they aim at what goes beyond understanding.

#sealeychallenge Day 9
Mosab Abu Toha, The Forest of Noise
This collection does the work of remaining present in Palestine and describing the way that war and violence are woven into every facet of daily life.
@thesealeychallenge

#sealeychallenge Day 8
Andrea Lawlor, Position Papers
This slim but potent volume is a series of prose poems with ideas for a utopian society. This 2016 book feels even more necessary now, when we so need the ability to believe that there can be a different future and that it will be wonderful.

#sealeychallenge Day 7
Fady Joudah, […]
This book is even more timely and necessary given the continued famine and genocide going on now in Gaza. It points the way to engagement with events that overwhelm our hearts and minds and hands without losing hope or the capacity to love.