This month I went in a completely different direction on the poetry front, and chose two recently published volumes of very critically-acclaimed and very contemporary poetry, Citizen: an American Lyric by Claudia Rankine, and Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones. Both are pretty quick read (100 pages each), and they pair really nicely together; although stylistically and structurally they are very different, they tread much of the same subject matter, namely race and identity (in the case of Prelude to Bruise, much of that identity is related to sexual and gender identity).

You shouldn't need my endorsement, because these were two of the most decorated books published in 2014, but I personally would recommend them to anyone who, like me, doesn't read much contemporary poetry. Reading them will also just make you a cooler/better person.