A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this little essay for The Gospel Coalition: “5 Contemporary Poets Christians Should Read,” in which I recommended the work of some fellow poets to persons of faith.

Many people have written since then, either on twitter, Facebook, or via my contact page to say things like “Thanks!” to “Have you got any Canadians to recommend?” to “Yes, but I’ve already read those; what else have you got for me?” Since I can be fairly easily impressed upon to dispense advice regarding cultural matters, I hearty yield to the demands of the populus and offer, from the top of my head and in no particular order, some more poets whose work concerns eternal matters and that I have read with delight.

Obviously, I hope that some readers of the column will seek out my poem books, not because moving copies is lucrative for me--it really isn't--but because I make poems best appreciated by people with Bibles in their houses. I don't mind how often you read it, but if you don't at least have one, much of what's going on in my work will be lost on you.
Bruce Beasely is about as good as they come, the poems challenging and encouraging all at once.
I mentioned Jennifer Maier's poetry; wicked smart; she is just a marvelous craftsman. Now, Now and Dark Alphabet are out currently and the third is coming soon.
I figured most readers of TGC already knew about Dana Gioa, but if you don't, get on it. Start with his new Selected.
Paul Willis’ books are wonderful too, each better than the last, imo.
I don't really think of Andrew Hudgins as a Christian poet anynmore, though I certainly used to. Now, he appears to me as principally a Southern poet, but these distinctions can be distractions. Saints and Sinners should find some friends among like-minded readers, but I'd pick up American Rendering, which is as strong a book as I can name.
I mean, Li-Young Lee is another figure who I used to think of as a Christian poet and now don't. He always had as muses his father, the silence, and his wife's body. I think recently he's ditched the first couple. Still, he's great. But you probably already knew that.
I can't imagine anyone interested in this kind of thing not knowing about Malcolm Guite, the very embodiment of a certain attentive way of being in the world.
Ok, but also James Matthew Wilson is a great and serious formalist; Catholic, as I understand it.
Brett Foster's new book hasn't arrived yet at my house, but I've heard great things.
You know who I just loved? Kelly Cherry. Does she still make poems? I stopped paying attention. But this is the tough thing about lists like this. Often, I follow not whole poets, but poems. Cherry made the most amazing poems I've ever read in this tradition, but I can't say anything about her career.
For serious, get Kingdom Come, by Jim Simmerman if you ever see it. Out-of-print and he's dead maybe 20 years by now, but that book is a wonder of Biblical linguistic play.
Oh and there's one more: you guys haven't seen it yet because it hasn't been published yet, but I have an advanced copy of Laura Reece Hogan's forthcoming Litany of Flights. You guys. Wait till you see this thing.

Well, that's enough to get you started anyway. I assume you already have subscriptions to Image Magazine, yes? Thereby, you will be introduced to most of the movers and shakers in this scene. Like Bruce Bond! O, how I love his poems!

Seriously, I'm grateful to the many of you who have written since this story came out asking about my books or offering to add some poets I haven't read yet. What else are these networks for? Keep the suggestions coming!

Poets ask me to write blurbs for their books sometimes, which add up, if you think about it, to a recommended reading list. Check these new books out:

Endorsements

Featured

Which Seeds Will Grow by Andrew Calis

"Scattered about, some seeds surely fall on the road, some are choked by weeds, and others fall on good soil and sprout. The work of Calis’ weighty new collection is to see all of them—the bloomed and fruiting ones along with the choked and trampled—as a testament to the long, slow, and holy struggle toward cultural healing, nourishment, the light."

City Nave by Betsy K. Brown

The poems in City Nave twist and slither off the page, never still, ablaze one breath and ashen the next, here admonishing, there searching, always, like a Phoenix, fiery, always re-birthing.

A Testament of Witness by David Lyle Jeffrey

Readers will be staggered at how much scholarship and good humor, how much formal dexterity and easy cadence, they find in these poems. A Testament of Witnesses is startling, aloft, and all of it singing an otherworldly glory.

Bower Lodge by Paul J. Pastor

For all its intimations of quietude, there's a wildness in Pastor's poems- think Berryman's dreaming songs or Whitman's barbarian yawp-a rusticity that is as defiant as it is pastoral. This book is a plumage, not of butterfly or bird, but of moth wing, which is to say: a blessing.

The Stranger by Ben Palpant

Ben Palpant’s poems in The Stranger breakdance through both biblical and literary history, remixing tunes from Tennyson and Gwendolyn Brooks with samples from the pop band Starship and the Divine Office. But those juxtapositions are not this strong collection’s best surprise. Rather, it’s the big quiet after each poem ends in which we mouth both How true and Hallelujah. This book is at once a daring and a tender undertaking.

After so Many Fires by Jeremiah Webster

After so much posturing on the parts of pundits, preening celebrities, poets on the picked through street market of the avant-garde; after so much hollow flash, so much essentially genre-bent lineated prose of small epiphanies; after so much, well, else, Jeremiah Webster’s After So Many Fires comes out of the Pacific Northwest like rain: greening everything, cleaning the language, sharpening the eye, casting a slant-lit wonder about this whole good God-haunted earth, and, most importantly, allowing again a kind of deep breathing.