It is rare to come across a book of poems—or any book for that matter—that lacks a table of contents. As I read, and couldn't help but reread, Kate Hall's extraordinary and wildly imaginative new collection of verse, I kept flipping to the beginning of the text hoping for that familiar, explanatory table with the book's sections clearly labeled, the poem titles typed neatly out, so I could gather my bearings. But no such roadmap exists in this dream-woozed work, only an apt opening epigraph from Sartre: "I have even lost the precise comprehension of what I seek and yet I am engaged in the search."

Perhaps the greatest joy of The Certainty Dream is how masterfully Hall challenges and expands the reader's understanding of existential inquiry. These poems are existential in that they strive to get a handle on what it means and how it feels to be a living, breathing, thought-riddled, death-sentenced human, even as true comprehension and clarity prove—repeatedly—slippery, difficult. Hall is a philosopher at heart, quoting the axioms of Descartes, Hume, Stevens, and others with aplomb, and her work often serves as a space where the lofty ideals of such thinkers can be explored through the possibilities of (seemingly) straightforward language and spunky, postmodern pastiche.

Most poems have elements of the surreal—dreaming and waking reality easily blur, as does the separation of self from the world around it ("I am escaping/ through a shattered window,/ out to where the stars are, looking in/ on myself through myself" from "Remind Me What The Light Is For"). As readers, however, we're never left drifting too long in unfamiliar ether: Hall's heartfelt emotional perspicuity and sharp vision, coupled with the book's overarching thematic coherence, act as reliable rudder. Who, then, needs a table of contents?

"It is beautiful to be made human…" So begins Lee's Underground National, a book in six sections. Each section is different but tied closely to the preceding ones, and each includes a layering of source text, photos, and more personal memory. The book is a collective of historical information, quotations, and political, personal, and cultural texts dealing specifically with the North Korean/South Korean division, following the repercussions of the Korean War and preceding occupations. Lee explores multiple layers of the conflict, both internal and external, at play on the Korean peninsula.

Formally, she is working mainly with prose paragraphs (some short, some long), interspersed with interesting formal shifts, great use of white space, and the fragment, as well as a wealth of found source texts. From the book's opening, we experience the tension of division, separation, confrontation. These issues run throughout the book. As readers, we are also forced underground, to see and listen to the repercussions of a country at war, a country conquered, a country recovering, a country divided continuously on itself: "But what the national speaks, we are required to understand./ And that speaking ties us to this sinking ground./ And it isn't stone at all, but made of blood."

Ito Hiromi is a legend: a woman who has singlehandedly transformed Japanese poetry in her lifetime. Intense, vibrant, and incantatory, her poetry is written in colloquial, bawdy, bodily, childlike, chant-like phrases. She writes of childbirth, menstruation, death, humanity, and pregnancy. But running under all of that is an intensity that is unparalleled. Her book is bright pink. The title poem, "Killing Kanoko," is a rolling text that builds on itself, violently describing and repeatedly touching on themes of abortion and death, the killing of infants, death itself, how women deal with death, and how we are ALL involved, by speaking directly about her own daughter, Kanoko, whom she did not kill, but whom she describes killing in the poem. And a grotesque image of a baby sparrow covered in black ants. Intense.

These poems are not afraid. Ito Hiromi is not afraid. She tackles people and themes with both hands, writing openly about her womanhood, motherhood, sexuality, and body. She uses chants and repetition to incant an emotional narrative running underneath what is maybe or maybe not real. According to translator Jeffrey Angles, Ito is known as a "shamaness of poetry" who was part of a "fundamental transformation" in Japanese women's writing. This book is a tour-de-force: truly a force to be reckoned with. Killing Kanoko is not for the faint of heart, but definitely an important read.

Just nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, Bird Eating Bird is a debut collection that gets a lot done and does it well, yet always feels real, never slick or rarified. Rather than presenting one poem-shape to her readers, Naca offers many, including traditional forms (sestina and villanelle), skinny vertical poems, horizontal spreads with one-sentence stanzas, and prose blocks. She also works with more deliberately visual effects, including scratched-out words and Olsonesque marginal notations in poems like "Tres Mujeres."

As the title of "Tres Mujeres" indicates, another thing Naca does well is work in more than one language, and it's notably pleasing that she is an excellent self-translator, offering, for example, a poem in Spanish accompanied by an English translation that's just as sharp and fresh. Many poems in Bird Eating Bird indicate that Naca is also adept at the everyday kinds of translations that are more than linguistic. In "Grocery Shopping with My Girlfriend Who Is Not Asian," it is textures that are translated: "I pronounce a name in Minh, kài lán,/ pull back its leaves, and reveal small,/ white flowers. All to watch her mouth/ the words and make white flowers/ translations."

Naca also proves herself as a strong erotic poet. Poems like "Tres Mujeres" and "The Adoration at El Montan Motor Lodge" remind me of gorgeous early Olga Broumas lyrics like "Innocence," being nimble and saturated, but Naca's work is less immaculate, crustier. This is not a criticism, however: with doing so many different things and doing them well, the risk would be that Bird Eating Bird could be too polished or glossy. This is not the case: it's sweaty and pungent, and a very interesting read.