May 2026 Roundup
DeeSoul's reading and recommendations from May 2026
Hellooooooo poets of the internet! May has been a busy month, but the summer is about to get even busier! O, Word? will be taking a summer break from releasing podcast episodes, but you can still expect to see these round-ups at the end of each month, as well as an ~ attempt ~ to keep up with this year’s Sealey challenge!
In case you missed it: Earlier this month, I had a great conversation with Nick Martino about nonce forms, especially about this “Polaroid” form that you can check out in his debut coming out in June! I also published a review in Honey Literary on jason b crawford’s second collection, YEET! An episode with jason drops this Monday, and it’s the last one of the season, so be sure to check it out!
Keep reading below for some May highlights, and hey — thanks for being here :)
What I’ve Read This Month
1) Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Rating: ★★★★★
Genre: Literary Fiction (Debut)
I want to be worthy of the terror my existence inspires.
- pg 216, Chapter 20
The nice thing about fiction from poets is that it's really still poetry, just with a lot of plot to work around. The main character, Cyrus, spends the book dwelling on death, the senselessness of it, how we can make the inevitable mean something. He passes through his days motherless, haunted by a woman he barely knew. I finish the book the day after my mother's birthday, my own mother martyr, my own senseless haunting in a Brooklyn apartment. This book opened me up to language's futility to capture our one, improbable lives, our attempts to capture it anyway. There's a boy looking to die. Language's feeble, inadequate miracle holds the end at bay.
2) An Encyclopedia of Bending Time by Kristin Keane
Rating: ★★★★★
Genre: Memoir
If you do decide to keep reading, you should ask yourself about the kind of story you are willing to accept.
- pg. 99, “Quantum Leap”
I'm not sure how I would have received this book three years ago. It would have been all theory to me; my mother would have still been around to chat about it. Now it is a reference text, an arrow separating the unchangeable past of my mother's passing and the uncertainty of the future without her. Is it easy to say I should be over it by now, that I can stop making it everyone else's issue. It is harder to do. This is a memoir that asks questions and understands they can't all be answered. That sometimes silence is the answer we live with.
3) Extinction Studies by Matthew Tuckner
Rating: ★★★½
Genre: Poetry (Chapbook)
Archetype: Essay
When I leave this planet
I am going to leave it naked
- "Common Air"
Extinction Studies is a chapbook that considers how we preserve in language the wealth of life that our species has doomed to disappear. There is a gesture in the collection towards catalog, an attempt to give a voice to these animals. What I appreciated most about this collection was Tuckner's willingness to engage with other art pieces and scholars as point of reference, as with the poems "Jack Rabbit" and the eponymous "Extinction Studies." A quick, contemplative read.
4) Praisesong for the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas, edited by Amanda Johnston
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: Poetry (Anthology)
Praisesong for the People is a celebration of the everyday folks that keep our lives chugging along — the bus driver, the cafeteria worker, the patient teacher, each stewards of their own small miracles, all of our miracles intersecting to sustain what we might call a life. Reading the anthology, I could not help but feel tender about all the love being shared between the covers. Here is a work for people looking to speak about the people that keep them alive. Here are 71 examples of how to say, "I am glad you are my neighbor. I am thankful for a world with you in it."
Longer review of this title coming soon!
New Poems in the Catalog
From Poem-a-Day
“The Sun, Mad Envious, Just Wants the Moon” | Patricia Smith, 2022
From Poetry Magazine
“I Go Back to May 1937” | Sharon Olds, 1987
Essay: “Learning the Poetic Line” | Rebecca Hazelton, 2014
From poetry.onl
“GAME OVER” | Summer Farah, 2022 ★
Work to Look Out For
This October is shaping up to be STACKED for poetry releases; perfect time to curl up with a book!
Hera Naguib’s debut collection, Rupture Anthem, comes out on October 6, 2026 from University of Pittsburg Press (whose cover designs continually charm me, I must say). The book is described as a “a journey of severance, faith, and womanhood across three continents,” as the author “navigates urban militarism and patriarchy, exploring what it means to be lost among your own people before ending up in the United States where she discovers freedom is often an unkept promise”
WE is the eagerly-awaited second collection forthcoming by award-winning writer Layli Long Soldier with Graywolf Press. We — noted as both the first-person plural and the Lakota word meaning “blood” — “examines what it means to be in community, to be in relation with family, nation, history, and language.”
Michelle Phương Hồ’s debut collection, Bone Symphony, is forthcoming from BOA Editions with a release date of October 13, 2026. The book was chosen by Aracelis Girmay as a Blessing the Boats selection, and I can personally attest to the strength of Michelle’s work. The work is described as “min[ing] the wreckage of colonialism and imperialist warfare in Vietnam and attempts to reassemble the bones.” This is a collection you aren’t going to want to miss.
Desire Path, the debut collection of Migwi Mwangi and winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, is forthcoming from University of Pittsburg Press’s Pitt Poetry Series. The collection “explores how everyday life, memory, history, and politics work against and toward each other across communities and national boundaries.”
Thank for reading! Until next time :)
Loved your reflections on Martyr!