As part of our occasional cross-posts with AML-adjacent Substack accounts, we wanted to highlight a new monthly newsletter by Isaac Richards, a PhD student at Penn State. Below is Isaac’s description of the new platform, and his first post, on poetry. You can subscribe to the Substack here: https://substack.com/@isaacjamesrichards .

Curated Monthly Highlights

I’ve patterned this personal Substack after the Cincinnati Review’s roundup feature or Image’s staff picks section. Instead of original content, just expect brief monthly updates that collect and highlight a few links to some of the best work I’ve encountered recently.

That will include poetry, essays, book reviews, and other writing on religion, communication, memory, and democracy. I intend to do a lot of promoting for my friends and colleagues via shout out, while featuring some of my own relevant content as well.

Poetry is Memorable Speech

Happy Poetry Month!

W. H. Auden often defined poetry as memorable speech. As both a published poet and a scholar of rhetoric, I love the way his definition reconnects these quarreling genres. For me, as for Aristotle, The Rhetoric and The Poetics are two halves of the same book.

Kairos

For that reason, there’s perhaps no better time to launch my digital commonplace book than the beginning of poetry month. This debut is a representative post. First, it attempts to capture the spirit of my interests in the humanities and liberal arts. More importantly, it demonstrates my commitment to highlighting the already excellent work in the world rather than stuffing cyberspace with new content creation.

Recommendations and Reviews

I’m thus thrilled to present five fine books of contemporary poetry that I’ve already had the pleasure of savoring. I hope my written endorsements may help you consider doing the same.

1. Making a Kingdom of It by Lance Larsen

I had the distinct honor of reviewing this title for the North American Review’s online venue: Open Space. As you’ll see from my praise there, I can’t recommend this collection more highly. Expect a gorgeous blend of entertaining mysticism, and “if stitches are too fleshy and elk at dawn too transcendent, fear not—for Larsen’s a humorist too.”

2. This Insatiable August by Maureen Clark

“Clark has made a heaven, in and on her own terms, out of this mud-brown Earth,” I wrote in my appraisal of this book for Sugar House Review. Of all the collections listed here, this one surprised me the most; it’s sharp images of death, desire, and family history have lingered with me for some time now.

3. Song for My Left Ear, Song for My Right by Jim Richards

I’m biased, but this one is my unequivocal favorite. Check out my dad’s long-awaited first book, a tightly crafted and sonorous tribute to fathers, sons, time, and even the absurd. He also has two recent poems in First Things: “Forecast” and “Song to Be Sung at the Resurrection of a Buck Killed by a Car.”

4. Litany with Wings by Tyler Chadwick

My celebration of Tyler’s book can be found at Psaltery & Lyre. “The poems are framed with Catholic liturgy—as prayers, psalms, rosaries, litanies, collects—but they roam from the Garden of Eden to the desert of Utah, with New Zealand in between.” As can be expected from that geography, even Satan makes an appearance.

5. O Lady, Speak Again by Dayna Patterson

This collection holds a special place in my heart as the first one I ever reviewed. To this day, I’m in awe of what Dayna was able to accomplish with form, sound, and allusion in that book. If you’re willing to scroll down or use “control+F,” you can read my review over at Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry. “While Shakespeare fans and ardent feminists are Patterson’s primary audiences, one need be neither to enjoy these poems.”

Don’t Miss This Ballet

ast but definitely not least, what better way to round out poetry month than by attending a live performance of Darlene Young’s lyrics set to original music, choreography, and art? On April 23 and 24, I’ll be in Provo to enjoy A Brief Collection of Moments—the prize-winning commission of the Ariel Bybee endowment at the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts,

performed by the Utah Metropolitan Ballet at the Covey Center as part of their repertory “Tribute.” My friends from the NYC Residency—Vanessa Cook, Michelle Nixon, and Dylan Findley—all put their best collaborative artwork together to make it happen. Get tickets here.

Until next time, enjoy the poems.

—Isaac

Isaac James Richards is a PhD student in Communication Arts and Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. His honors include the Kenneth Burke Prize in Rhetoric from the Center for Democratic Deliberation and the James L. Golden Outstanding Student Essay in Rhetoric Award from the National Communication Association. He studies the history and theory of writing, rhetoric, media, and communication, with particular attention to the intersection of memory, religion, and democracy.

With Ben Crosby, Isaac is co-editor of Latter-day Eloquence: Two Centuries of Mormon Oratory (University of Illinois Press, 2026). His work has appeared in several journals, including Religion & the Arts, The Journal for the History of Rhetoric, The Western Journal of Communication, The Journal of American Culture, The Journal of Media and Religion, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly.

Isaac has attended the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar at Harvard Divinity School and the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts in New York City. His work has been supported by the American Society for the History of Rhetoric, the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, the Mormon History Association, and the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies. His poetry, prose, and fiction can be found in LIT, Guernica, The Threepenny Review, and this Substack.

He’s currently working on an intellectual biography of Wayne C. Booth, also under contract at the University of Illinois Press.

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Isaac Richards: Poetry is Memorable Speech