The Adroit Journal

Accidental Devotions, Kelli Russell Agodon’s fifth full-length collection published by Copper Canyon Press in May 2026, is an incandescent and tender exploration of what it means to be human in the confusion of contemporary life, where few certainties exist and where it can feel like “god has left the group chat.” The collection casts us…

Ryan Teitman is the author of the poetry collections Litany for the City (BOA Editions, 2012) and Paperweight (University of Akron Press, 2026), winner of the Akron Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, and The Yale Review, and his awards include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a MacDowell Fellowship, and a…

Susan Leary’s More Flowers is a woven exploration of what can happen when a poet juxtaposes craft and theory. As the speaker avoids discursive identity, this poetry collection relies on scientific study, images of the grotesque, and monstrous tropes to analyze what it means to live in a feminine-coded body, slipping in and out of…

Connection to the natural world and its capacity for solace permeate Atkin’s lyrical memoir, The Company of Owls, where in her state of chronic illness, she feels “more kinship with owls than other humans” (43). Poet, memoirist, and academic, Atkin interweaves her personal history and the history of local owl breeds with intimate field notes…

It was my good luck to come upon Carolyn Guinzio’s new book, Cameo Blue (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2026), her eighth collection, after reading her immersive 2024 chapbook, Meanwhile in Arkansas, winner of the Quarterly West Chapbook Prize. Guinzio, a native of Chicago who has lived in Arkansas for many years, writes with unflagging intensity…