2018 brought with it a lot of great poetry. Some revisited older forms or older stories to create something vital and new, while others took bold risks with language in order to illuminate aspects of the present sociopolitical condition. Whether they were causing us to rethink the quotidian or leading us to unexpected places, here are some of our favorite examples of verse that emerged this year.
We listened to a lot of music this year. The new music we enjoyed the most ran the gamut from blissed-out ambient work to cathartic examples of hip-hop and hardcore. Also in there were some notable collaborations, expansive artistic statements, and next-level work from artists in their prime — a sonically disparate mixtape that never fails to energize.
The fiction we admired most in 2018 ran the proverbial gamut from thought-provoking surrealism to evocative realism. Some illuminated the present day or recent past, while others ventured into much more uncharted territory. Some took us to unimaginable psyches; others showcased how ordinary people dealt with the extraordinary. Here’s a look at ten of our favorite works of fiction this year.
2018 was an excellent year for books, and we’re beginning our look back at the year in culture with some thoughts on the nonfiction books that most impressed us.
With the year drawing to a close, we wanted to spotlight a (somewhat arbitrary) number of books due out next year that we’re excited about. It includes the latest books from writers whose work we’ve long enjoyed to debuts to forthcoming tomes that are utterly unexpected. There’s more to come in this vein–in about ten days, we’ll be publishing our January book preview, which will include a lot more books we’re excited about for the first month of the year. […]
Our favorite comics from this year spanned a host of narratives, from metafictional explorations of loss and belonging to ominous supernatural tales of terrifying forces at work. Some are formally inventive, while others make use of a lean storytelling approach to convey the narratives at their center. All of them opened our eyes to the tales being told, regardless of their nature.
“If beauty is in acts of ordinary devotion I think ugliness must be in the acts of everyday neglect, small gestures that chip and chip and eventually rip shards of what it means to be human, to be loved and loving, out of you. It is easy to pretend nothing is happening.” – Arabelle Sicardi, “The Year in Ugliness” (Hazlitt) When I was sixteen, I started working at a corporate bookstore, and I kept working until I graduated from college. […]
For many readers, poetry provided an essential way to understand the world around us this year. Poetry could provide a window into the life of another; it could, in a few deftly worded lines, illuminate a particular experience of perspective on the world. Here are some of the poetry collections that we most enjoyed this year.