a Year \u0026 other poems by Jos Charles

a Year \u0026 other poems Reviews

• 
  Ada

  Not my cup of tea.
  
  Poemes molt curts i tan fragmentats que sovint m'han deixat aïllada, per molt que els llegís i rellegís. No soc de les que pensa que has d'entendre la poesia perquè t'agradi, però en aquest cas no he pogut disfrutar massa, tampoc, del propi llenguatge.
  Amb això no dic que no m'hagi agradat gens. Alguns dels poemes son molt evocadors i quan et deixen entrar notes tota la seva esplendor. Hi ha imatges brillants. En cert sentit m'ha recordat a Anne Michaels, per la brevetat i l'opacitat.
• 
  Basia

  "The poem is perhaps," Jos Charles hypothesizes, "a room." And the rooms of A Year are quiet and sparse, made hollow by uncertainty, its attendant fear, and grief. But in other rooms, Charles makes a generous offering, where she places a beloved in a poem to climb a tree and devour grapefruit, and suddenly the poem becomes a space for not recounting what's gone, what's going, and what remains, but a site of play and possibility—a place where grief gets reversed. Still, most of A Year concerns emptiness and what to make of it in a burning world crowded with chaos, the syntax stuttering along.
• 
  Elena

  i liked this brain jazz
  
  I put you into a poem
  You climbed the giantest tree
  
  I put a dozen grapefruit into a tree
  You ate every one There is a letter
  
  in a desk I cannot know
  One day I will
• 
  Momo

  1.5/5
  I really just did not enjoy this. I didn't hate this but I also just didn't like any whole poem from this collection. There were like four parts of certain poems that I liked but it just isn't for me. I like most poetry and prose as long as they aren't too classical sounding but this wasn't even that, it was just confusing and it felt like reading an essay you wrote at 2 am the next day. I think the cover is beautiful which is why I picked it up from my library's 2022 poetry releases section and I had liked the one poem that I read part of but I guess I just got fortunate with what I opened it up to. If this book weren't so short I would have put it down it after the first few poems.
• 
  Nicholas Montemarano

  It's National Poetry Month. Poetry, especially at this point in my life, is my favorite genre to read. This is a beautifully designed book by a publisher I admire. I read wonderful things about this book. I bought it with such anticipation, expecting/hoping to love it. But the truth is: I'm pretty sure I don't understand 90% of it. And I'm a writer/author/college professor whose reading tastes and writing tend toward the unconventional. In other words, I enter every book I read open-minded, open-hearted. Still, I read each line, each word, in a fog. I always tell my students: Poetry is not meant to be summarized or restated; it is what it is, first word to last, that is what a poem "means." A poem is a language experience that resurrects our emotions. Even so, this particular language experience simply did not reach me. Tolstoy's famous definition of art as the transfer of emotion from writer to reader: here, that transfer did not happen. I want to make clear: In no way do I see this as a failure of the writer, or as my failure as a reader. In no way am I saying that this is not a "good" book (whatever that means). I am saying, simply, that I did not feel a connection with the words on the page. Certainly others have, but I felt that this book kept me at arm's length. I did not feel welcome into its world.
• 
  Kent

  The poet, Jos Charles, as I see her in this book and her previous book, feeld, is like one of those people who builds model ships in a bottle. "Like" because it's not so much the elaborate intricacy I admire in her poems. It's the care and gesture toward the meticulous. Or the articulate. Jos Charles is this poet of measured articulation. And in feeld I found myself entirely absorbed in the poems, and imagery, and extended logic of that imagery as I made my way through the book. In a Year, I see that same stance towards subject. I can hear the consideration of others' dying, the closely felt loss. But I am not able to catch the poems' rhythms to feel myself fully absorbed in the work. It may be this is by design. That an extended consideration of loss can be an abstracted state.
  
  However, I'm not sure the poetic significance of the year I'm being escorted through. There doesn't seem to be a change from one month to the next. There are vague references to seasonal descriptions. But those references don't feel integrated into the poem's mechanics--something I would imagine happening in a book so solidly framing a year. And, granted, the first book that comes to mind using "year" as a structural element is Stacy Szymaszek's a year from today. Admittedly, these are very different styles to be juxtaposing. But at least showing how a long poem can be engaged with a year so it exists in the grain of the poem is relevant.
  
  I recognize I am reading this book in the shadow of Charles's feeld. Which I have taught multiple times. Which continues to captivate me. But the recurring imagery of feeld, and the pacing, and the absolute slow-down of reading is what I came into a Year anticipating. This kind of anticipation may prove my personal unfairness to the book. That said, I am the forever 5-star devotee to what Charles writes. The shift from Safe Space to feeld is absolutely remarkable. And where I am in sync with the poems of a Year, I feel traction and velocity and sinewy-ness I am captivated by.
• 
  Sophie Juhlin

  Wow. It physically hurt to hit those two stars because I wanted so badly to love this. I don’t think I knew for even a moment where I was during this book. There was no breath spared for the moments that anchor the reader. Just sheer motion and passing noise, though these were as artful as expected.
  
  HOWEVER, since the ebooks Edelweiss sends are not always the best vehicle for poetry (see: literally never, though kindly and freely provided) I am desperate to give this one a paper chance when it comes out. Because I can see the moments here, no matter how fleeting.
• 
  Gabriel Noel

  ARC given by Edelweiss+ for Honest Review
  [2.5 stars]
  
  A very personal look at a year through lyrical prose and poetry.
  
  The free verse, while beautifully written, seemed a bit outdone as some poems ended up more confusing than understandable from a reader perspective. I found I was able to follow the narrative somewhat, but would get lost in some of the overly personal language.
  
  I was a fan of the lines:
  "I had not
  begun to think past
  testament of want
  I didn't want
  I believed sentences knew their end"
  They are simple yet powerful and let me understand Charles' look at finality.
  
  My other favorite poem is "A New York Poem."
  
  (Also this was labeled as LGBTQ but I was not able to recognize that theme in the book.)
• 
  Lea

  “If I have misspoke let me | be clear”
  I didn’t find much to be clear. At first I wasn’t going to rate this because I felt like I didn’t get it. I couldn’t make sense of the structure or even put it together as coherent thought. But then there were a few poems, or pages of the year poem and the other poems that made complete sense to me and I identified the structure and the meaning. It really left me wanting more. Selfishly maybe, that it was more accessible to me as a reader. I could feel good and powerful intent but I couldn’t quite access it for myself. So the 2 star is for me and I hope that other readers find it more to their liking.
  
  I purchased this from Milkweed during poetry month because it was said to include subjects like wildfire and California, which it did, sort of.
• 
  Penn Kemp

  These poems speak silence, speak space, the life inbetween, the loss. And what is left are lines
  layered into song, contemplating time.
  
  “Awaiting now clarity but the shadow of something clear…
  It is not for wont of
  understanding I place notes to turn to after this”
  
  “I read I
  long so
  much for my beloved dead
  ones The day of miracle being
  past The day a plot a grove
  we make & know which breath held time”
  
  “What was crossed out is not the same
  as what was never written down
  Mountains mind even us”
• 
  Hannah Fenster

  Jos Charles’ latest collection did that *thing*, that astounding act of drilling a space in the world around me as I read, opening up a vigorous stillness. These poems core out evolving feelings over the course of a difficult year, in so intimate a way, it really rocked me. In language that feels ancient, legacied, Charles allows—and trusts—her readers to witness what survives. I'm really honored to be one of them, to read from this vantage point, beyond specific circumstances into the senses of them. A reading experience unlike any other.
• 
  Lo

  Jos Charles writes something I had to reread over and over again. “a Year” poem was mind blowing in just its relation of a home to a body but also the metaphors appearing to be obvious with so much more beneath. The style is beautiful but again not easily comprehensible and I wouldn’t have been to able comprehend without Eli. But as the poem “January” says, she doesn’t want to be understood but to just be.
• 
  Robin

  In this slender volume of Charles's work, poems of fragmented thought and interrupted feelings document the passing of time.
• 
  PT

  Yeahhh idk
• 
  Jess

  Not great, just meh. It feels like the same tone throughout which gets boring quickly. Disappointing because I loved feeld.
• 
  Patricia N. McLaughlin

  Remembered January or July—any month the same, really—these gauzy impressions express at times “the logic of cloud,” at others “the logic of a window shade.”
  
  Favorite Poem:
  “December”
• 
  Sarah Yeaste

  If you love the abstract and obscure, then this is the poetry collection for you. I’ve had the honor of hearing Jos read from her collection in work, and she is absolutely wonderful.