Dive into Poetry Month with three new books

Versed

Once an obscure language poet, Rae Armantrout is now reaching a larger audience (often in the pages of The New Yorker) with her elliptical, oblique narratives. In Versed (Wesleyan, $22.95), she explores her usual themes of mass-cultural detritus ("Dolls as celebrities") and language's slipperiness, but adds a new dimension: seemingly autobiographical, if oblique, poems about battling cancer, which quest after "a healthy cell," making this a deeply personal and powerful book.

Buy Versed on BN.com | Buy it on Amazon.com

End of the West

Michael Dickman—who, with his twin brother and fellow poet Matthew, played a "pre-cog" opposite Samantha Morton and Tom Cruise in the movie Minority Report—makes his poetic debut this month with End of the West (Copper Canyon, $15 paperback), a haunting collection of stark, jerky poetic sequences that try to define the self against the busy backdrop of the Internet age and a quietly devastated family in which "Soon everything will ice over//There won't be/any room, not/ anymore."

Buy End of the West on BN.com | Buy it on Amazon.com

The Method

If you like your poetry spiced with a bit of math, you might go for The Method (Fence, $15 paperback) by Sasha Steensen, who personifies the eponymous ancient manuscript of theorems and proofs written by Archimedes in 250 B.C. to create an extended meditation on the life of ideas across time. This is a surprisingly relevant topic, especially given Google's promise to digitize every book ever written. Throughout, a generous spirit rises to the surface. In a poem called "In Palestine," Steensen says, "It's hard to hate a people/.../when you've read/ their poetry." Wise words.

Buy The Method on BN.com | Buy it on Amazon.com

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