Here are five first poetry books that Carrie Jerrell likes a lot:

1. Evie Shockley’s a half-red sea
2. Rebecca Black’s Cottonlandia
3. David Roderick’s Blue Colonial
4. Josh Bell’s No Planets Strike
5. Kevin McFadden’s Hardscrabble

BIO: Carrie Jerrell’s collection After the Revival won the 2008 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. She is an assistant professor of English and associate director of the low-residency MFA program at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky.