Among the many new books published each season is a shelf full of notable anthologies, each one showcasing the work of writers united by genre, form, or theme. The Anthologist highlights a few recently released or forthcoming collections, including The Gift of Animals: Poems of Love, Loss, and Connection.
Organized in clusters of poems that “Praise,” “Lament,” provide “Companionship,” speak to “Fear and Vulnerability,” and recognize “The Least Among Us,” “The Sacred,” and “The Future of Animals,” The Gift of Animals: Poems of Love, Loss, and Connection (Storey, April 2025) is an anthology of vibrant spirit and range. Edited by Alison Hawthorne Deming, the collection is populated by life forms big and small—from elephants to bees—and features creatures from a variety of habitats, including koalas, foxes, manatees, and snakes. Ellen Bass offers an ode to the fish, Joy Harjo reveres the eagle, and W. S. Merwin meditates on a coming extinction. In her foreword, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes: “In the remembrances of my Potawatomi culture, the old people said there was a long-ago time when all the people, human and otherwise, spoke the same language. We shared teachings and warnings and everyday gossip about the doings of our neighbors. But no more. We’ve been cut off, although most humans don’t even recollect the loss, except in rare moments of interspecies encounter. The poems in this collection provide such moments, fleeting glimpses of deep connection.” This anthology bears witness to profound encounters with animals, which may in turn ready readers for their own numinous experiences with nature.
Anthologies furnish multiple perspectives or points of entry into a given subject, form, or theme, giving the reader ample opportunity to find personal resonance. Such is the case with What My Father and I Don’t Talk About: Sixteen Writers Break the Silence (Simon & Schuster, May 2025). A follow-up to What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence (Simon & Schuster, 2019), this collection of essays, edited by Michele Filgate, confronts the complicated and sometimes contentious relationships we have with our fathers. Tomás Q. Morín paints a tender portrait of a distant father, while Kelly McMasters describes a committed and attentive one. Heather Sellers demonstrates how our relationships to our fathers and forgiveness can evolve over time. This anthology represents a kaleidoscope of emotions and experiences regarding fathers, a multiplicity of which often occur within a single essay, inside a single relationship.
Another polyphonic exploration is at work in the anthology Sing the Truth: The Kweli Journal Short Story Collection (Authors Equity, May 2025) edited by Laura Pegram. This spring, the quarterly literary journal Kweli— “truth” in Swahili—celebrates fifteen years of nurturing and publishing BIPOC writers that “sing the truth.” This eclectic collection of short stories features work by authors including Naima Coster, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Daphne Palasi Andreades, and others. In the foreword Edwidge Danticat writes, “The stories in this collection exquisitely and painstakingly explore complex family relationships, grief and loss, migration and diaspora, displacement and assimilation, mass incarceration and the carceral state, socioeconomic disparities, classism, and racism, but also hope, resilience, and joy.” At a moment when explorations of race and identity are being threatened, dismissed, and erased, this story collection presents a resilient chorus of narratives and humanity.
