The Year in Review: Best Chapbooks

{ December 26, 2009 @ 4:49 pm } · { Poetry Books }
{ Tags: Good Reading }

Yes, I know that I had my first chapbook published this year, but I’m not going to put Stealing Dust on my list.  Instead, I have listed my top 10 chapbook picks of the year in alphabetical order according to poet’s last name.

1. The Doors of the Body by Mary Alexandra Agner (Mayapple)
2. Slow the Appetite Down by Michele Battiste (Spire Press)
3. Spring Melt by Katherine Bode-Lang (Seven Kitchens Press)
4. Hunger All Inside by Marie Gauthier (Finishing Line Press)
5. The Beaded Curtain by Megan O’Reilly Green (Spire Press)
6. Barbed Wire and Bedclothes by Alice Pettway (Spire Press)
7. Inside Bone There’s Always Marrow by Rachel Mallino (Maverick Duck)
8. They Speak of Fruit by Gary L. McDowell (Cooper Dillon Books)
9. In the Voice of a Minor Saint by Sarah J. Sloat (Tilt Press)
10. Flood Year by Sara Tracey (Dancing Girls Press)

Also, I have to  mention the wonderful In the Kingdom of My Familiar (Tilt Press) by Julie Platt.  This chapbook was published at the end of 2008, but I read it at the start of 2009.  Finally, Notes from the Red Zone by Christina Pacosz was republished by Seven Kitchens Press, and as I mentioned in another post, this chapbook was originally published in 1982 — and it’s back for a new generation to read.

Of course, I must also post a disclaimer — I have a short memory and it’s been a long year, so if you had a chapbook published this past year and I have not read it, or God forbid, I did read your chapbook and I didn’t mention it, please drop me a note.