This one has a list.

You like lists, right? They give you a chance to disagree with the person who made the list.

At an earlier stage in my life, I used to really enjoy the year-end lists that would pop up at PopMatters or the A.V. Club or Pitchfork, but at some point the Zeitgeist and I ended up on different trajectories, so those lists are now largely populated with albums and artists that mean nothing to me.

…It’ll happen to YOU!

Yes, obviously I’ve gotten old and unhip. I’m not sure I’ve ever been anything more than accidentally hip anyway; it’s more that sometimes the culture at large rediscovers things I continue to love (post-punk, Doc Martens, poetry, irony, etc.) and those things briefly have a moment in the spotlight before something else comes along and captures the attention of the novelty-seeking masses.

Of course, throughout that sort of boom-and-bust cycle of my hipness currency, my taste has stated relatively consistent. (Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that it’s remarkably resistant to the pressures of fad and fashion.)

I’m also remarkably resistant to the notion that there’s any sort of objective “best” to be found in best-of lists. I have my favorites, but taste is too complex and idiosyncratic to be distilled in such a way, and what’s held up as “best” often uses popularity as the metric by which quality is measured. That doesn’t quite work for me, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

Still, in the spirit of reflection and recollection, I’m going to offer a short list of books that have been particularly meaningful for me over the past 12 months. Some of them have ended up on other people’s year-end lists; some of them weren’t published this year, and so are ineligble for other people’s lists. C’est la vie. I hope you might find something meaningful in this list for yourself.

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Poetry

Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen — Yes, I’ve talked a lot about this book, but it’s one near to my heart because I was able to see it come together. I know how much of herself Kenzie poured into this book. These poems are scintillating and smart and offer new ways to consider what it means to make a life.

Ghost :: Seeds by Sebastian Merrill — Speaking of new ways to consider what it means to make a life, Sebastian’s book is an exemplar of writing about transformation, reinterpreting as it does the myth of Persephone to provide a gloss I’ve not encountered anywhere else on the experience of gender transition. This is a beautiful book, generous in its humanity, and stunning in its lyricism.

Saints of Little Faith by Megan Pinto — Weaving together imagery drawn from the experience of becoming & being a woman in contemporary America, from Catholicism, from the experience of caring for a father wrestling with mental health issues, and from life as a member of the South Asian diaspora, this book is unafraid to address challenging subjects head on; what makes it essential for me is the strength of selfhood and currents of joy that run throughout.

The Book Eaters by Carolina Hotchandani — There are many themes in this book that complement those in Megan Pinto’s book, but one of the beauties of poetry is that each poet will approach even the same topic in an entirely different fashion, one that adds to the richness of our understanding. So it is with Carolina’s collection, where the South Asian diasporic experience is seen through a different lens, as is the care of an aging father facing cognitive decline. There are joys in this book as well, with a particularly moving thread involving motherhood that never turns sentimental.

When The Trees Finally Testify by Bonita Lee Penn — A collection of sharp, inventive poems rooted in Bonita’s experience as a Black woman in America, this book isn’t just truth speaking to power; it’s truth claiming itself as equal to anything called “power” by people who just want control. The current of love throughout this book — love for the self, love for the beloved community, love for the world that hasn’t shown much love for either the self or the community — is transformational.

Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips — This is a book that will appear on many people’s best-of lists, I think, and deservedly so. These gorgeous lyrics manage to feel both incredibly personal and also beautifully elusive; no matter how many Carl Phillips poems I read (and I’ve read a lot of them!), he manages to suprise me at the intersection of image and syntax — and no one is better at controlling the tension that drives a poem forward.

Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss — Another book that will be on many best-of lists, and again, deservedly so. The title is a cheeky nod to an anthology that Diane encountered early on in her poetic education; it’s also a sort of loose organizing principle for the poems within this collection, whose project is poetry itself. Throughout it all, Diane’s inimitable humor and perspective (both dark and sardonic — just my speed!) and remarkable capacity for honesty and vulnerability stitch everything together.

Public Abstract by Jane Huffman — The poems in this collection are incredibly precise in diction, in image, and in form, and yet they never feel constricted or constrained. Such is the paradox of Jane’s poems, which make use of formal elements to contain the wild, vivid emotions that thrum throughout reflections on chronic illness and addiction, on family and solitude, and on the duality of the public persona and the private person.

Landlock X by Sarah Audsley — These poems, rooted in Sarah’s own experience as a transracial adoptee, consider essential existential questions about the development of a true sense of self in the face of other people’s idea of you. Landlock X is as concerned with the boundaries between people as it is with the borders between geopolitical states, and Sarah probes these manifestations through both verse and visual collage poems in this gorgeous book.

Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens: On Reading and Writing Poetry Forensically by Paisley Rekdal — This isn’t a poetry collection; it’s an incredibly smart and insightful and clear and engaging craft book written by one of America’s greatest contemporary poetic minds. In the 35 years I’ve been studying poetry, I’ve never encountered a craft book that is as thorough or as enjoyable. Did I bring it to a bar one night and read it like a novel? I did. It’s that good.

And speaking of novels…since I’ve started writing one, I’ve been reading more fiction than I usually do. So…

Fiction

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson — My brilliant & generous friend Hurley Winkler recommended this book to me after hearing what my plan was for my novel, reasoning that the protagonist of this book would prove to be an inspiration as I move forward. I don’t want to say much more about this book; I think it’s perhaps best to dive in with no expectations aside from the fact that every sentence crackles with electric life and the characters are among the most original I’ve encountered.

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran — This was another Hurley Winkler recommendation in support of my novel-writing efforts, and I found this book utterly charming and delightful. The fact that it’s a bildungsroman set in ‘90s Britain and centers on a music-obsessed teenage girl would’ve been enough, but I learned a great deal about how a single point-of-view can be used to build a world and depict other characters.

You Think You Hear by Matt O’Keefe — Written by a friend and former roadie for the band Papas Fritas, this book was inspired by their tour opening for Blur, but it’s a very fictionalized account. It’s also a very Gen X novel; the protagonist is a lovable loser of the sort that used to populate a lot of books, films, and songs in the ‘90s but has fallen out of fashion in our poptimist era. This is the book that prodded me towards writing my own, and while I don’t think it’s required reading for anyone, I certainly enjoyed it.

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I could continue on and tell you what nonfiction books and music and film I enjoyed this year, but I feel like this missive is both too long and too niche by half, so I won’t bore you.

Also, if your book wasn’t among those I listed here, it doesn’t mean I didn’t love it. Or that I don’t love you. If I re-made this list tomorrow, the odds are very high that it would be completely different.

It is my sincere hope that 2025 will see unexpected peace break out in all spheres of existence and that you — yes, you, sitting there and reading this — will experience joy in some form. As for me? I hope to finish the first draft of this novel in 2025, maybe get a few more poems out there. We’ll see what happens.