• Mary Ruefle, Dunce (Flood 2019)
• Nikki Wallschlaeger, Waterbaby (Copper Canyon 2021)
• Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind (Milkweed 2022)
• Dan Beachy-Quick (trns), The Thinking Root: The Poetry of Earliest Greek Philosophy (Milkweed 2023) and Stone-Garland: Six Poets from the Greek Lyric Tradition (Milkweed 2020)
• Ann Carson (trns), If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (Vintage 2003)
• Alan Watts, This Is It (Vintage 1960, 1973)
• Jonathan Lethem, Fear of Music (33⅓ #86, Bloomsbury 2012)
• Amanda Petrusich, Pink Moon (33⅓ #51, Bloomsbury 2007)

• Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising (Collier 1973) (reread)

• Steven Mithen, After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000–5,000 BC (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2003)
• Diane Seuss, Frank: Sonnets (Graywolf 2021)
• Sara Eliza Johnson, Vapor (Milkweed 2022)
• Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh (Yale 2021)

• Henry David Thoreau, The Journal: 1837–1861 (NYRB 2009)
• Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell (Bantam 1974) (reread)
• Grace Paley, Fidelity (FSG 2008)
• Robert Bly, Sleepers Joining Hands (Harper & Row, 1973; Norton, 2018)

• Lawrence Kilham, The American Crow and the Common Raven (Texas A&M 1989)
• Susanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (Harvard 1942, 1957)
• Adam Zagajewski, In Defense of Ardor (FSG 2004)
• Richard Nelson, The Island Within (Vintage 1989) (reread)

• Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (Milkweed 2013)
• Lawrence Kilham, On Watching Birds (Chelsea Green 1988) (reread)
• Ann Zwinger, Beyond the Aspen Grove (University of Arizona Press 1970, 1988) (reread)
• John M Marzluff & Tony Angell, In the Company of Crows and Ravens (Yale 2005)
• Thoreau, Walden (Library of America 1989) (reread)
• Dana Levin, Now Do You Know Where You Are (Copper Canyon 2022)
• Paul J Pastor, Bower Lodge (Fernwood 2021)
• Vaan Nguyen (trns Adriana X. Jacobs), The Truffle Eye (Zephyr Press 2021)

• Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (Balantine 1970)
• Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks (FSG 2021)
• Edward Gorey, Thoughtful Alphabets (Pomegranate 2012)
• Philip Metres, Shrapnel Maps (Copper Canyon 2020)
• Claudia Serea, Writing on the Walls at Night (Unsolicited Press 2022)

• GK Chesterton, Manalive (John Lane 1912) (reread)
• GK Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (Penguin Classics 1908, 2011)

• Russell Hoban, The Mouse and His Child (Scholastic 1967, 2001)
• Russell Hoban, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (Bloomsbury 1973, 2000) (reread)
• Russell Hoban, Kleinzeit (Summit Books 1974) (reread)

• Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (Yale 2009, 2019)
• AR Ammons, Sumerian Vistas (Norton 1987)
• Ellen Bass, Indigo (Copper Canyon 2020)
• Carolyn Forché, In the Lateness of the World (Penguin 2020)
• Rob Shouten (ed), Rinkeldekinkel (Milkweed 2021)
• Mark Scroggins, Elegaic Verses (above/ground 2020)
• JJ Rowan, a simple verb (Bloof 2019)
• Kristina Lugn (trns Elizabeth Clark Wessel), I Want You to Come Now! (Bloof 2021)

Finished in December

• Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (Harper & Row 1977) (reread)
• Robert Karen, Becoming Attached (Oxford 1994)
• Walter J Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (University of Chicago 1958, 2004)

• Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, Return of the King (Mariner Books 2012) (reread)

• Nikki Wallschlaeger, Crawlspace (Bloof Books 2017)
• Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (Wave Books 2012)

• Maria Dahvana Headley (trns), Beowulf (MCDxFSG 2020)
• Thoreau, Faith in a Seed: The Dispersion of Seeds (Island Press 1993)
• Dana Levin, Wedding Day (Copper Canyon 2005)
• Steve Martin, Born Standing Up (Scribner 2007) (reread)
• Goethe (Salm, trns), Faust (Bantam 1962, 1985)

• Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways (Penguin 2013)
• David Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel, and Language (Princeton 2007)
• Robyn Hitchcock, Somewhere Apart: Selected Lyrics 1977–1997 (Tiny Ghost Press 2021)
• Dorianne Laux & Kim Addonizio, A Poet’s Companion (Norton 1997)

• Danielle Pafunda, The Dead Girls Speak in Unison (Bloof Books 2017)
• HD, Trilogy (New Directions 1998)
• Charles Simic, The World Doesn’t End (Harvest 1989)
• Ada Limón, The Carrying (Milkweed 2018)
• Brian Hare & Vanessa Woods, Survival of the Friendliest (Random House 2020)

• Ursula Andjær Olsen (trns, Katrine Øgaard Jensen), Outgoing Vessel (Action Books 2021)
• JM Tyree, The Counterforce: Pynchon’s Inherent Vice (Fiction Advocate 2021)
• Olivia Laing, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency (Norton 2021)
• Marcus Aurelius (trns, Gregory Hays), Meditations (Random House 2003)
• Jean Daive (trns, Rosmarie Waldrop) Under the Dome: Walks with Paul Celan (City Lights 2020)
• Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score (Penguin 2015)

• CG Jung, Synchronicity (Princeton 1973, 2010)
• Kelli Russell Agodon, Dialogues with Rising Tides (Copper Canyon 2021)
• Benjamin Dreyer, Dreyer’s English (Random House 2019)

• Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (Shambhala 1986, 2016) (My first reread in maybe 33 years)
• Rainer Maria Rilke (Pike trns), The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Dalkey Archive 2008)
• Claudia Serea, Nothing Important Happened Today (Broadstone 2016)
• Craig Koslovsky, Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge 2011)
• Rainer Maria Rilke (M.D. Herder Norton trns), Letters to a Young Poet (Norton 1954)
• Don Paterson, Orpheus: A Version of Rilke’s Die Sonette an Orpheus (Faber & Faber 2006)
• Aase Berg (Göransson trns), Remainland: Selected Poems (Action Books 2005)

1. Evening’s Empire was a long time coming. I checked it out of the library in the spring of 2013, and read maybe the first quarter. I bought a copy a year later, starting over from the beginning. I set it down repeatedly over the next six years, and finally finished the last three chapters in a big push over several days. An absolutely excellent book.
2. All this Rilke over the last month or so is because of a correspondence course called Rilke by Mail offered by the poet Mark Wunderlich. Rilke was an early and, I see now, extremely strong influence on me when I was a young poet starting out in college.

• Ursula Andjær Olsen (trns, Katrine Øgaard Jensen), Third-Millennium Heart (Action Books 2017)
• Danielle Pafunda, Spite (The Operating System 2020)
• Dakotah Jennifer, Fog (Bloof Books 2019)
• Rainer Maria Rilke (trns, Edward Snow), Duino Elegies (North Point Press 2001)
• Shirley Kaufman, Roots in the Air: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon 1996)
• Alex Dimitrov, Love and Other Poems (Copper Canyon 2021)
• Aase Berg (trns, Johannes Görensson & Joyelle McSweeney), Tsunami from Solaris: Essays on Poetry (Action Books 2019)

• Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (Harper & Row 1989) (reread)
• Mark Wunderlich, God of Nothingness (Graywolf 2020)
• Erin Belieu, Come-Hither Honeycomb (Copper Canyon 2021)
• Erin Belieu, One Above and One Below (Copper Canyon 2000) (reread)
• Emma Jung & Marie-Louise von Franz (Andrea Dykes, trns), The Grail Legend (Sigo Press 1986)
• Shanna Compton, (Creature Sounds Fade) (Black Lawrence Press 2020)
• Rainer Maria Rilke (trns, Damion Searls), Letters to a Young Poet, with the Letters to Rilke from the “Young Poet” (Liveright 2021)

• Giusseppe Ungaretti (trns, Geoffrey Brock), Allegria (Archipelago Books 2020)
• Erin Belieu, Infanta (Copper Canyon 1995) (reread)
• Katie Manning, 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books, 2020)
• Alison Moncrieff, Cherrystem (Finishing Line Press, 2017)
• Jeff Parent, This Bygone Route (845 Press 2020)

• Louise Glück, The Wild Iris (in Poems 1962–2012, FSG 2012)
• Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem (Copper Canyon 2020)

• Jennifer L Knox, Crushing It (Copper Canyon 2020)
• Vievee Francis, Forest Primeval (TriQuarterly 2016)

• Hergé, Tintin: Cigars of the Pharaoh (Atlantic Little Brown, 1975) (reread)
• Hergé, Tintin: The Blue Lotus (Atlantic Little Brown, 1984) (reread)
• Hergé, Tintin: The Broken Ear (Atlantic Little Brown, 1978) (reread)
• Hergé, Tintin: The Black Island (Atlantic Little Brown, 1975) (reread)
• Hergé, Tintin: King Ottokar’s Sceptre (Atlantic Little Brown, 1974) (reread)
• Charles King, Gods of the Upper Air (Anchor 2019)
• James Longenbach, The Art of the Poetic Line (Graywolf 2008)