This month, we’ve asked some writerly friends to share suggestions for reading. Today, Jesse Nathan shares his recommendations. Jesse’s poems appear in Boston Review, The American Poetry Review, The Nation, and elsewhere, and you can read his critical prose at The Rumpus. He was born in Berkeley, grew up on a wheat farm in rural Kansas, graduated from Bethel College, and lives now in San Francisco. Nathan studies poetry at Stanford. Recently he edited, with Ilya Kaminsky and Dominic Luxford, the anthology In the Shape of a Human Body I Am Visiting the Earth.

A few recent favorites from Jesse:

Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil. An unclassifiable — essay, poem, rumination — by C.D. Wright.

“What Are Years.” A poem by Marianne Moore.

“A Brief for the Defense.” A poem by Jack Gilbert.

Glass, Irony, and God. A collection of poetry by Anne Carson.

House of Lords and Commons. The latest book of poems by Ishion Hutchinson.

Mickey Rourke and the Bluebird of Happiness: A Poet’s Notebooks. Ruminations and mini-essays by W.S. Di Piero.

“Reconciliation.” A poem by Czeslaw Milosz.

The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. Prose by Roberto Calasso.