Books
Begin at the cover: a photograph of the author in bed with a cup of tea, as if to affirm for us that the book—like all books, although it is not always so evident—has an author. This assertion of the author’s life will be important, as will be the image of poetry as the author’s beacon, lighting out. Whereas before 2020 sitting fully dressed in bed with a cup of tea might have signified a Proustian kind of illness-decadence, it registers now as our prevailing ontological condition.
With the covers rolled up to her waist, she’s lit by a doorway, a blinding frame of luminescence. A figure in the doorway, the arrivant, holding up what we know to be a cellphone. The photo implies the existence of another photograph: this one, not static, presented on the screen of that cellphone, the one true bearer of the photograph’s aura. Where should the poetry begin if not here? “A picture of me from before I knew you,” one of the poems will begin. One intuits the photo of the author before it is taken, plus the book held in our hands—the instantaneous proof of a life.
included Callie Garnett’s debut collection of poetry, , in their list of the best poetry of 2021. Its importance, how-ever, extends beyond that arbitrary parameter, although, it should be argued, it couldn’t have been written in any other time. Garnett’s work was the only “pandemic book” listed (a phrase, due to lack of a proper historical distance and lack of vaccination, it seems we’ll live with a little longer), which may ultimately act in its favor, tasked as it is with defining the nascent genre. And in the subcategory of poetry, it further refines what we talk about
