Must-Read Poetry: January 2018

Here are six notable books of poetry publishing in January.

by Listen to ’s stirring classic that inspired Phillips’s title, and then settle into this masterful collection. Phillips has found the sweet union between pacing and structure, and each poem in this book, like Simone’s recording, fully inhabits its space. The wideness and wisdom of his first person steps out in the middle of poems, as in “Brothers in Arms”: “I’ve always thought / gratitude’s the one correct response to having been made, / however painfully, to see this life more up close.” And “The happiest / people I know are those whose main strategy has / always been detachment.” This sense of control permeates the book, exemplified in poems like “Stray”: “Sometimes the thought that I’m doomed / to fail—that the body is—keeps me almost steady, if / steadiness is what