It's that time of the year for various New York Times columnists to feature their favorite book covers, rock music, jazz projects, art books, movies and books of poems which they've encountered over the past twelve months. So, here are the favorites of this Times writer: NYT best books of poetry 2022.
I get the first on the list, along with our columnist, who digs the intersection of language, text and print, all apparently foregrounded to message. Or perhaps, as McLuhan said so fondly of literature: the medium is the message? Anyway, I look forward to reading a book of poems where language calls attention to itself even at the expense of sense.
And I applaud the last on the list (the "list" is just that; it's not a ranking), which is a collection of one poet's translations of some 200 poems from ancient China. It's the ancientness that I like, and the foreignness too. That sort of thing also foregrounds language, in my experience, and makes for much more interesting reading.
As for the rest, well, there are the usual suspects of books built on messaging: of loss and grief (in this case, of a child); of change and memory (yawn); about me (i.e., the poet, which reminds our columnist of Sylvia Plath's poems; I'll skip that one this year); and of "knowledge" the author either celebrates or denigrates (I can't tell from the synopsis: "Everything I learned, I wished I hadn't." Really?).
So if you're looking for some poetry to expand your reading or your sense of the art or with which to fine-tune your ear, this year's columnist's favorites list is as good a place as any to start.
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