Must-Read Poetry: October 2018

Here are six notable books of poetry publishing in October.

The Lumberjack’s Dove by GennaRose Nethercott
All praise to book-length poems. Nethercott’s yarn begins with a lumberjack who chops off his own hand. “The hand becomes a dove” and tries to fly away, but the lumberjack strings it to his belt. He “walks out of the forest, the airborne hand fluttering along behind.” The narrator tells us: “You know this story.” It’s part whisper, part command, all curiosity. How do we know this story? We know stories like it—folklore borne of the forest—and we know that our lives and souls are stories. It begins to add up. Nethercott’s narrator is gentle, quirky, playful, endearing: this is a book to read in circles around fires, under blankets, in dark and quiet room corners. Befuddled, the lumberjack wanders