Poetry

"With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own stumbling way towards womanhood. Drawing from her own life and the lives of loved ones, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women, and teenage girls. In Shire's hands, lives spring into fullness....

Curated by award-winning and best-selling poets, this wide-ranging poetry anthology represents twenty years of poetry from the students and alumni of Chicago's Oak Park River Forest High School Spoken Word Club.

"In poems written for the daughter she will leave behind, the dying speaker of "Dear Specimen" examines grief, culpability, and love, asking: what value can we ascribe to our lives and do we as a species deserve to survive?"-- Provided by publisher.

"The personal and poignant debut poetry collection from the award- winning singer, songwriter, and producer revolves around the emotions, struggles, and experiences of finding your voice and confidence as a woman. "I've realized that some feelings can't be turned into a song . . . so I've started writing poems. Just like my songs, they are personal and honest. Just like my songs, they have hooks and rhymes. Just like my songs, they talk about what...

"On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet, at age twenty-two, to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Her inaugural poem, "The Hill We Climb," is now available to cherish in this special edition." -- Provided by publisher.

"With lacerating honesty, technical mastery, and abiding compassion, Made to Explode offers volatile poems for our volatile times. In her fourth collection, acclaimed poet Sandra Beasley interrogates the landscapes of her life. She probes memories of growing up in Virginia, in Thomas Jefferson's shadow, where liberal affluence obscured and perpetuated racist aggressions, but where the poet was simultaneously steeped in the cultural traditions of the...

"A book of elegy, loss, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent. "We sleep long, / if not sound," Young writes early on in this exquisite gathering of poems, "Till the end/ we sing / into the wind." In scenes and settings that circle family and the generations in the American South--one poem, "Kith," exploring that strange bedfellow of "kin"--the speaker and his young son wander among the stones of their ancestors. "Like heat he seeks...

"Winner of the 2019 Forward and Roehampton Prizes, Vertigo & Ghost pitches quickly into an "addictive, thrilling, sickening" (John Self, Guardian) sequence of graphic, stunning pieces about Zeus as a serial rapist, for whom woman are prey and sex is weaponized. These are frank, brilliant, devastating poems of vulnerability and rage. In the book's second half, acclaimed poet Fiona Benson shifts to an intimate and lyrical document of depression, family...

"A new collection from Louise Glück, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature"-- Provided by publisher.