The poet Lawrence Joseph was asked to name the book or books he liked best in 2019. He picked Toi Derricotte’s I: New and Selected Poems ("30 new poems, and generous selections from Derricotte’s five important earlier books of poetry") and Jana Prikryl’s No Matter ("her second book of poems, set primarily in a post-2016 presidential election New York City)."
His third choice: "A book of nonfiction by one of our best poets—David Lehman’s One Hundred Autobiographies: A Memoir. While in throes of fighting cancer, Lehman wrote every day he could, as a way of imaginatively affirming his existence and escaping the terrible ordeals of pain, dread, and emotional chaos. First of all figuring out a formal strategy, as expert poets do, Lehman then crafts a brilliant, inventive portrait of a mind, in language in which everything counts. The book’s moral seriousness and theological and ancestral powers provide extreme aesthetic pleasure—Lehman’s forms of language are forms of life, always life. One Hundred Autobiographies teaches and instructs its fortunate readers, like all great literature, which it is. "
— Lawrence Joseph, Lit Hub
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