Galway Kinnell
[isbn]
Shattering. Rapturous. Kinnell's often-baroque language belies one of the most frank and powerful reckonings with death I have ever come across. This ten-part poem also wrestles with what it means to build a family and live with tenderness in a world that runs on cruelty.
Recommended by Kai B.
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Brian S. Ellis
[isbn]
Brian S. Ellis’s poems are heady, human, philosophical, sometimes dark, sometimes funny, beautifully nerdy, and always full of story.
Recommended by Gigi L.
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Ross Gay
[isbn]
Ross Gay is a beautiful human, and reading this book makes you feel like he’s your good friend. These essays will restore your hope for humanity and remind you of the exquisite joy the natural world brings. This book makes a perfect gift.
Recommended by Marianne T
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Ben Lerner
[isbn]
For poets who hesitate to call themselves poets, this essay is a reminder of the futility of our beloved form. Lerner incisively guides the reader through transcendent and terrible poems, all of which are failures of a different kind, only some of which succeed by virtue of their failure. I'm partial to Lerner's idea that every poet harbors some resentment towards poetry, and every poetry hater masks a certain envy, maybe even a curiosity, of... (read more)
Recommended by Nadia N.
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David Lehman, Elaine Equi
[isbn]
If you’re like me, and you didn’t get around to reading all those journals and new books of poetry that you meant to last year, then you’ll appreciate this slim book of stunningly good poems. You’ll find familiar names, ranging from Armentrout to Zapruder, but a lot of talented new voices as well. I look forward to this book each year, and 2023 is truly stellar!
Recommended by Marianne T
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Matthew Zapruder
[isbn]
This is a beautiful book that talks about the making of a poem while sharing a very intimate portrait of the author as he struggles with the weight of a child diagnosed with autism and a planet that’s fragile and failing. He responds by putting word after word on the page, and we get to read it all.
Recommended by Marianne T
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Stephanie Burt
[isbn]
Stephanie Burt is a talented poet who is really, really good at talking about poems, as she does in this friendly, informative guide to the pleasure of reading and interacting with individual poems, and by extension with “poetry.” With chapters like “Feelings,” “Wisdom,” and “Community,” this book provides a fresh approach that will inform those newer to poetry and will delight everyone.
Recommended by Marianne T
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Kwame Alexander
[isbn]
Go to page 81 and read "Good Night." This look into his marriage... it's so relatable. Kwame Alexander's memoir reads like a love letter to his family. One that is open and honest and full of the good and bad. And at the center of it all is food. I love the mix of poetry and essays, with a sprinkling of recipes throughout. If you pick up this book, try the fried chicken on page 125. Yes, it's good.
Recommended by Rose H.
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Emily Dickinson
[isbn]
What I learned from Emily — is larger than this Store* / More vivid than the Sunset Sky — and whimsical galore!
Seriously, she gave me my poetic license (and no street is
since safe).
*Powell's City of Books on Burnside
Recommended by Marianne T
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Sharon Olds
[isbn]
Once I rode the bus with Sharon Olds, and she was as her poems are — friendly, conversational, painstakingly honest, and wisely humorous too. Her work gave me permission to tell whoever would listen that I had something to say, just an ordinary human on an ordinary day. And so I wrote and published poems and now I can say, thank you, Sharon. Read her poetry and you too will be changed.
Recommended by Marianne T
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Matthew Dickman
[isbn]
These are simple poems, but they reach deep into our soft places and tug, reminding us that we are also a little scared and worried, childlike and vulnerable, fiercely hopeful and still in love with this world despite the bruises. Dickman’s diminutive couplets belie big feelings. I love this collection.
Recommended by Marianne T
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Sylvia Plath
[isbn]
This bookstore is like a fig tree. Wonderful worlds beckoning on every shelf like branches. Overwhelmed with indecision on which fig to choose? Don't let this prescient, timeless work dry up and go to waste...
Recommended by Etan L.
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Jane Wong
[isbn]
Jane Wong's poetry has already established her as one of our finest writers at the intersection between food, family, and identity. Her memoir delves even more vulnerably into this vein, exploring what it means to grow up as a working-class artist swirling between depths of care (from friends, family, and sliced fruit) and carelessness (from boyfriends, family, and food bloggers). With playful free-associative prose and a multiplicity of styles... (read more)
Recommended by Kai B.
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Olivia Gatwood
[isbn]
This collection is probably one of the most beautiful yet heartbreaking poetry collections I’ve had the pleasure of reading. From the very first poem, Gatwood begins to question what it really means and how it feels to be a girl, never holding back or shying away from the scariness or sadness of the truth. Far too often in this world, being a girl is about your body — how it looks, how it feels, and what you’re willing to do with it. Gatwood... (read more)
Recommended by Aster A.
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Sylvia Plath
[isbn]
This book is one of my favorite works of fiction. However, stating that has earned me more than one concerned glance over the years. The thing about this book is, even sixty years after its publication, it is something that many young girls, and young people in general, still relate to. Truly the most wonderful thing about this novel is its truth and vulnerability, both of which are often the reason people turn away from it. It is meant to be... (read more)
Recommended by Aster A.
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Blythe Baird
[isbn]
Blythe Baird is one of the first modern poets that truly got to me in the ways that so many classic poets did. The way she writes about struggle and recovery is simultaneously heartbreaking and healing. You can feel the moments behind each and every line, and no matter the content of any individual collection or poem, she shows you there is still hope and beauty, and for each moment out there that hurts you, there is another on the way that will... (read more)
Recommended by Aster A.
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Blythe Baird
[isbn]
The very first poem lays bare what is to come in such a simple, yet strong way; both the title and the poem “When The Fat Girl Gets Skinny” express so many things that often feel inexpressible. This collection, which largely talks about Baird’s struggle with anorexia and the long road to recovery, truly speaks to the crushing weight that conventional beauty standards and diet culture put on young girls' shoulders and the pain of being... (read more)
Recommended by Aster A.
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Jessica Cuello
[isbn]
A haunting and beautiful, poetic pseudo-biography of Mary Shelly written as a series of letters and notes in verse to her mother. The contents range from mundane pictures of everyday life to confessions of grief and guilt. Each poem in this collection is both connected and wholly its own.
Recommended by Aster A.
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Marilyn Chin
[isbn]
Marilyn Chin is angry, and that means we all are lucky, for there is so much energy in these wonderfully diverse poems focused on social justice and the state of the world as we know it! She makes us laugh and cry, sometimes in the same poem. And this, too: "Don't say we are nothing / Year after year / The pear tree blossoms."
Recommended by Marianne T
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Leonard Cohen
[isbn]
Cohen himself decried his poetry for a lack of sophistication. Yet, his body of work reveals the beauty of losers, the longing in loneliness, and what is illuminated by the light that gets through the crack in everything. If we can grant him that same grace, then it is easy to accept that a poem need not be perfect to be beautiful.
Recommended by Brandon S.
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Aaron Smith
[isbn]
Simultaneously campy and serious, Aaron Smith's poems capture his experiences and perspective as a gay man. Stop Lying, his fifth collection, is perhaps his best yet — a tender and nuanced revisiting of his relationship with his dying mother, especially his complicated response to her lifelong rejection of his queerness.
Recommended by Adam P.
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Jayme Ringleb
[isbn]
A thoroughly wonderful debut collection. Tender and viny, these poems sprout from places loved and lost, intimate and estranged, but all grow towards the light.
Recommended by Kai B.
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Billy Ray Belcourt
[isbn]
This powerful, poetic memoir-in-essays lives at the intersection of queerness and "other"-ness. Belcourt basks in vulnerability in such a beautiful way, while exploring sexuality, trauma, colonialism, and love. Really great!
Recommended by Carrie K.
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Ross Gay
[isbn]
Never has there been a book more aptly titled. This one is truly delightful and sure to inspire you, make you ponder, and warm your heart. Having a gratitude practice, or at least taking the time to acknowledge when something makes us happy, is something we could all benefit from. Relish in simple pleasures, you won't regret it!
Recommended by Carrie K.
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Hannah Sullivan
[isbn]
Hannah Sullivan's debut, Three Poems, was a revelation — a funny, urbane voice addressing modern life and love through intelligent and unforgettable verse. Was It for This, her follow-up book, is somehow even better — a hybrid work of prose and poetry that expands her vision to examine motherhood, memory, and mortality.
Recommended by Adam P.
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Camille T Dungy
[isbn]
Camille T. Dungy is one of the first poets I think of when someone asks me to recommend a favorite nature poet writing today. Not only is she a brilliant conjurer of lyric images from the animal to the botanical (as evident here in the brilliant Trophic Cascade) but she is also known for an expansive body of work that celebrates the historical contributions of Black poets to nature writing, travel writing, and ecopoetics. (For more,... (read more)
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Zeina Hashem Beck
[isbn]
O is a dazzling, heart-forward collection built around an innovative form Beck has created called 'The Duet' — a bilingual conversation between English and Arabic, sung to life from the emergent meeting places that poetry makes possible.
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Jenny Xie
[isbn]
Jenny Xie's The Rupture Tense is a marvel where poetry, history, and photography converge. Collapsing generational timelines, Xie's seemingly boundless forms revisit archives and family histories connected to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, finding within its enforced silences and gaps in memory the persistence of a living language that is mutable, teeming, and always "leak[ing] through." A must read for anyone with an interest in... (read more)
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Morgan Harper Nichols
[isbn]
If you feel broken, turn to page 44. There is no single path to healing, no one cure-all. This book is something I flip through when my grief feels too heavy. I see this collection of poetry as spiritual instead of religious... I am not religious at all and found the words in this book unbelievably healing.
Recommended by Rose H.
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Gary Snyder
[isbn]
Gary Snyder is a student of Buddha and Thoreau. Enclosed in The Practice of the Wild are nine essays on habitat, ecology, their interconnectedness, and an attempt to inspire our involvement in general care. The first ecosystem is the heart — our consciousness — and so long as it's covered up, the outside world will reflect how we treat ourselves. Perhaps Synder is attempting to illicit an awakening of our compassion and attention beyond... (read more)
Recommended by Dana S.
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W B Yeats, Richard J Finneran
[isbn]
The world is attractive — superficially and the deeper one goes. So much of the language, expressions, and conceptions we use today were developed gradually by humanity's thinkers, writers, and people in general, through arts and dialectic conversation. These Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats display the genesis of a writer honing in on the gripping narrative of perception from their early to ending days. It's a fascinating survey for those... (read more)
Recommended by Dana S.
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Collins, Billy
[isbn]
Ever felt like a sailor coursing through the ocean of a day? Billy Collins put out four books of poetry before this one, with titles such as Questions About Angels, The Apple that Astonished Paris, and Picnic, Lightning, that are enough to get the imagination stirring. Some of his favorite poems have made it into the collection beside his new poems. This is the first collection that he put together after the passing of his... (read more)
Recommended by Dana S.
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Emily Dickinson
[isbn]
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson makes a good companion book. These poems fit between breaks, bus-stops, and long rides. Emily allows herself to write sincerely and seriously about the range of human experience, the quotidian, the emotive, and the transcendent. Perhaps the modern forerunner to contemporary poetry, she writes in quick beats that run parallel to the brevity of a moment. As with lives' instants, her poems come and go,... (read more)
Recommended by Dana S.
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Phil Kaye
[isbn]
Phil Kaye's collection gives back to us the nostalgia for 90's and early 2000s childhood along with moving reflections on the challenges of growing up mixed race in America. There were numerous poems here that I found myself saying "I had this conversation growing up"... or "I had these thoughts and did these things after watching Indiana Jones." A pleasant morning or early afternoon read that pairs well with an old movie, waffles, and a warm... (read more)
Recommended by Mahalik
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Elizabeth Bradfield and Cmarie Fuhrman and Derek Sheffield
[isbn]
Cascadia: the region that stretches from Southeast Alaska down to Northern California, and from the Pacific Ocean to parts of Idaho and Montana. Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry is exactly as promised. Various writers and artists, spanning style and content, share their love of the Cascadia region through illustrations, poems, and natural history.
Recommended by Corie K-B.
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Richard Siken
[isbn]
Siken's poetry gives me words for emotions I didn't know other folks felt. His artistic mastery of language, imagery, and visceral detail lends itself to hard-hitting, beautiful verse. Flip through, even if you're not a poetry person. You might like it!
Recommended by Carlee B
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Sarah Shin, Ben Vickers, Francesca Gavin
[isbn]
Specializing in experimental writing on all things esoteric and mystical, UK-based Ignota Press is one of my favorite small presses to have emerged in the last few years. This book is one of their latest offerings: an anthology of writing on the unknowable reaches of consciousness (think: the occult, the psychedelic, the panpsychic) that will introduce you to a treasure trove of some of the most thrilling contemporary voices writing between the... (read more)
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Maggie Millner
[isbn]
In Couplets, Maggie Millner has written a highly structured, accessible book about the fluidity and restraint of relationships and sexuality. These rhyming couplets interspersed with prose meditations thrilled me. I've never read a book quite like this one before.
Recommended by Adam P.
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Alycia Pirmohamed
[isbn]
Elk in tall grass; a door of glacial water; ghosts in a canopy of pine trees. Such images refract, double, and pool across this aqueous debut collection – a work of deep memory (and counter-memory) whose “rivering toward the light” returns its readers always to the ever-entangled multiplicities of language and selfhood. A diviner of intimate ecological attention, Pirmohamed is a revelation and one of my favorite poets writing today.
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Vivek Narayanan
[isbn]
Whatever purpose is served by a small well of water is naturally served in all respects by a large lake. The large lake, or ocean, of the Ramayana is reflected upon and responded to in After by Vivek Narayan, with lots of play on form and even language. The reader will encounter heartfelt expressions, the influence of timeless characters, and longing for connection.
Recommended by Dana S.
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Bob Kaufman, Devorah Major, Neeli Cherkovski
[isbn]
Used to be you couldn't throw a rock in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco without hitting someone who had a Bob Kaufman story. Those days may be gone but Kaufman's legacy as arguably the one true genius of Beat poetics gets a shot in the arm with this long overdue collection.
Improvisatory, visionary, anarchistic; anguished, defiant, and funny as hell, Kaufman's poetry is a Black American surrealist cry against the constraints of... (read more)
Recommended by Tony W
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Layli Long Soldier
[isbn]
Challenging, but wonderfully revolutionary in both content and form. Long Soldier shreds and scatters the language of American colonialism, combining the scraps with shards of Lakota and sculpting them onto the page with a masterful freedom.
Recommended by Kai B.
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Kevin Sampsell
[isbn]
A fantastic new book of collage and poetry, with images carefully crafted like graffiti tags in their juxtaposition of the serious and humorous, the jarring and the beautiful, melded with poems of stark truths and whimsical absurdity splashing about the pages.
Recommended by Nicholas Y.
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Gabrielle Bates
[isbn]
I’ve been looking forward to a full collection from Gabrielle Bates ever since reading her poem ‘The Dog’ (published a few years ago in The Offing) whose stoic oscillations between brutality and tenderness left me quietly awed and curious for more. Now 'The Dog' serves as the opening poem to her outstanding debut Judas Goat, a rightful overture to a book of granular intensity and wrestling across its weighty core... (read more)
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Mary Oliver
[isbn]
The perfect selction of poems to reflect and ponder with as we approach the new year! This book was good for my soul and I like that the primary theme was nature.
Recommended by Erica B.
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Adrienne Rich
[isbn]
Rich's poems make me feel so seen, so enlivened, so empowered to pay better attention to the world and my place in it. They are simultaneously lush and spare — exact — and so lucid both in terms of their clear-eyed perception and the brilliant light they give to gender, sexuality, power, and so much else. Winner of the 1974 National Book Award for Poetry, this is a collection that rewards rereading year after year.
Recommended by Claire A.
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Pablo Neruda
[isbn]
This is a wonderful introduction to and a beautiful distillation of the work of Nobel Prize–winning poet Pablo Neruda. His poems express such loving, honest, awestruck attention to the world with dizzying beauty and powerful clarity of vision. This book spans forty years of Neruda's career and features translations by multiple scholars and poets, which provides a really interesting sense of his poetics. I love that this edition includes the... (read more)
Recommended by Claire A.
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Sappho, Anne Carson
[isbn]
Of Sappho's fabled nine books of lyrics, only one poem remains intact. The rest are punctuated by blank spaces, words, and phrases sacrificed to time. Many translators have attempted to fill these absences with language; Carson prefers to honor the scraps. Her translation is brilliant and incisive, each word a precious jewel magnified by empty space. Missing words are signified by brackets, an invitation for the reader to join in the iterative... (read more)
Recommended by Nadia N.
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Gary Snyder
[isbn]
Meet Gary Snyder, you maybe read about him in On the Road and Dharma Bums (Japhy Ryder). He speaks for himself here, seeing the world through the lens of his blended Buddhism. In love with nature and mesmerized by her intricacy, care, and nurturing, his poems serve to remind us of the ground.
Recommended by Dana S.
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Mary Oliver
[isbn]
Does Mary Oliver's heart beat slower to be able to capture the delicacy of a morning, getting out of bed, or walking outside like she does? I don't know and pardon if the question is distracting. What I mean to say is that reading her work makes my heart beat slower, helps me feel how my life is poetic too. Lots of gratitude for this person.
Recommended by Dana S.
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Paul Reps
[isbn]
Paul Reps was on his way to meet a Zen master in Korea in the 50s. He went to the passport office but was denied due to a conflict just breaking out. He politely accepted the decision and turned around, went to sit on a bench, pulled out his thermos, and drank his green tea. Afterwards he wrote a haiku that made the employee cry. His visa was approved thereafter.
Recommended by Dana S.
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W S Merwin
[isbn]
Beauty is self-evident. Check out "Inheritance" on p. 32. If there's anything else I can add, I'll say this... Merwin translates some of Neruda's work, and now lives in Hawai'i with his wife, talking care of flowers. He's the real deal as a poet, and just may help wonderful images bloom in your heart.
Recommended by Dana S.
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Charles Simic
[isbn]
Flip to p. 17 and let me know what you think. Simic's poetry is bite-size and chock-full of the attention
that comes either after a lifetime of musing
or a true appreciation for the details that make life grand. Any book by him may just help you see the world anew.
Recommended by Dana S.
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Robert Wood Lynn
[isbn]
I do not often get the chance to look at yet to be released poetry books, but I am so very glad I was able to stumble upon an early copy of this book. Everything about this collection from the way it is sectioned, to the amazing poems titles, to the formatting is clearly a labor of passion and it pays off big time and all works together to enhance the beautiful poetry within. These poems will make you laugh, make you cry, and most importantly... (read more)
Recommended by Aster A.
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ry downey
[isbn]
In The Dinosaurs Are Orange in Seattle, Ry Downey uses his poetic gift to do what poets do best: capturing those unspoken moods, drifting through contradictions of time and place, wandering around, absorbing everything he comes into contact with, and producing it into his own creative blend of words. He melds observations, nostalgia, and philosophical contemplations, into a natural, narrative, stream-of-consciousness style that is both... (read more)
Recommended by Nicholas Y.
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Fernando Pessoa, Margaret Jull Costa, Patricio Ferrari
[isbn]
Why, yes. I would like to lose myself in the imaginative musings of an uneducated shepherd that doubles as a latent homosexual, modernist poet's alternate personality. Recondite and for the melancholic, Caeiro (Pessoa) asseverates the incomparable feeling of saudade like a siren song across the Atlantic. I would advise learning to at least read EU Portuguese because the original poems are unbelievably beautiful read aloud.
Recommended by Stacy W.
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Saeed Jones
[isbn]
When I read the opening poem in Saeed Jones’ new collection, I was so struck by his insight into our intractable problems that I felt I needed to set the book down and walk it off. I went back to it. I’ll keep coming back to it.
Recommended by Keith M.
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Ross Gay
[isbn]
In his latest collection, award-winning poet and bestselling author Ross Gay explores — in full-length, heavily footnoted essays that eddy conversationally around their topics — the complex, cathartic, and unifying thing that is joy. Whether you’re seeking it or seeking to better understand it, Inciting Joy delivers.
Recommended by Tove H.
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Alessandra Lynch
[isbn]
Lynch's devastating collection pulls no punches, in spite of its delicate prose. A fragmented trauma narrative pieced together from the author's own experiences, Lynch forces the reader into a body that feels alien and uninhabitable after the violence enacted upon it. Daylily struggles to process and verbalize her memories as she attempts to normalize, drifting through her own life as a spectator, by turns overwhelmed by rage, numbness, grief,... (read more)
Recommended by SitaraG
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Tony Hoagland
[isbn]
The late Tony Hoagland's final book of poems is an amazing collection put together by the writer and his wife, Kathleen Lee. Even in his last years of battling pancreatic cancer, he never lost his wry wit and distinct worldview. Hoagland's incredible work has consistently brought me belly laughs and wrenching tears, and Turn Up the Ocean is no different.
Recommended by Eric L.
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Ross John Farrar
[isbn]
Bitter, beautiful, and brutally honest, post-punk band Ceremony's front man Ross Farrar's latest book sings the praises of Suicide's Alan Vega, the devastation of losing friends and subsequently visiting their graves, and the elation and pitfalls of recreational drug use and its abuse in a way that is uniquely his. Told through the voice of "Ross," an obvious stand-in for the author himself, Ross Sings Cheree & the Animated Dark is a... (read more)
Recommended by Eric L.
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Victoria Chang
[isbn]
Victoria Chang’s intriguing new collection is mostly composed of short, symbolic poems using Japanese waka forms. The book has a unique tall, narrow trim size that makes this a literal standout in a section that’s home to no shortage of great poetry. Rarely have I been so captivated by a collection; each brief poem demands your full attention for repeated readings. Though small, these poems have an outsized gravitational pull, like that of a... (read more)
Recommended by Keith M.
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John Higgs
[isbn]
There's something about Blake that speaks to me. Well... not so much "speak" as "slaps me across the face with both hands before shaking me by the shoulders while jumping up and down, ranting and raving about god knows what," and I love it. Sometimes though, it would be nice to understand those ravings a little better, and luckily, John Higgs, scribe of The KLF and I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary, has... (read more)
Recommended by Fletcher O.
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Ada Calhoun
[isbn]
I picked this book up because, like Ada Calhoun, and her father, Peter Schjeldahl, I love Frank O'Hara's poems. As I hoped and expected it would, Also a Poet delivered wonderful anecdotes about O'Hara and his milieu that I hadn't previously heard. I was surprised and delighted to be just as invested in Calhoun's focus on her complex relationship with her father, writing, gender, and art. Also a Poet charmed and moved me. I'll be... (read more)
Recommended by Adam P.
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Sueyeun Juliette Lee
[isbn]
Lee's exploration of grief and identity is as impactful as it is strange (in a good way). Her deep understanding of light and ability to inject an uncanny apocalyptic landscape into her poems create a fascinating book that relies on different modes of creative expression and scientific research to inform its content. I have never, and likely will never, read something else quite like it. It's possible that it will change your understanding of the... (read more)
Recommended by Eric L.
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David Trinidad
[isbn]
In his newest book, David Trinidad uses his well-established (and gossipy) poetic style to revisit his childhood in southern California, his family history, and his decades-long career as a poet. Digging to Wonderland is highly indebted to Joe Brainard's I Remember, and is a worthy heir to it.
Recommended by Adam P.
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Ada Limon
[isbn]
Ada Limón’s new book is the work of a poet at the height of her powers. The poems in this collection are welcoming and wise; reverent to nature and well-informed about human relations. I think the best word to describe this volume is: heartening.
Recommended by Keith M.
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Valzhyna Mort
[isbn]
In this award-winning collection, Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort invokes a harrowing reckoning with historical mass atrocities, bent through the keyhole of family memory. Her poems are precise and angular, tinged with ironies and bizarre details that leave a lasting imprint on the reader — a kind of spooky carousel of whispering chestnuts, rattling bone-keys, faces in household objects (purses, shovels), and ghostly bison. I hesitate to reduce the... (read more)
Recommended by Alexa W.
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H Melt
[isbn]
What I adore about this book is that it centers trans joy with such fierce intentionality and love for trans communities. H. Melt’s poetry is a soothing balm that carves out space for and insists to trans folks, you are here, you are seen, you are wanted, and you are loved.
Recommended by Alexis B.
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Jasmine Mans
[isbn]
Black Girl, Call Home is an utterly gorgeous collection from acclaimed poet Jasmine Mans, whose poetic voice lingers on the heart and can't — you won’t want it to — be set down. It is a beacon for the lost and wandering and a warm envelopment of home, healing, and the clarity that each of those lends to the soul. One of my favorite contemporary collections of poetry for its warmth, honesty, and undeniable artistry.
Recommended by Alexis B.
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Neil Hilborn
[isbn]
This is a collection I have read over and over. It is beautiful and heartfelt while simultaneously funny. Each poem lets you into an aspect of Neil's life from how much he loves his wife to how sometimes mental illness can take over our lives and is terrible and hard, but on either end of the spectrum and every step in between, this collection makes you feel so understood and far less alone. Full of nostalgia and longing but also hope for the... (read more)
Recommended by Aster A.
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Frank O'Hara
[isbn]
Lines of this collection from Frank O'Hara bubble up into my brain almost daily as I make my way around the city, visiting record stores, riding the MAX, and finding other reasons to not totally regret life. I can't really imagine living without these poems, and I'm glad I don't have to.
Recommended by Adam P.
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Carl Phillips
[isbn]
Every new collection from Carl Phillips is a reason to celebrate! Then the War is a hybrid book: both a complete collection of new poems, and selections from the past fifteen years of his work, including the entirety of his chapbook, Star Map with Action Figures, and an extended prose piece called "Among the Trees." If you've never read Carl Phillips, this book is an excellent entry point, and if you're a fan, well, you already... (read more)
Recommended by Adam P.
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Yi Lei and Tracy K. Smith
[isbn]
Both widely loved and much maligned, Yi Let dedicated all of her effort and art to subverting the oppressive power structures of China. Her revolutionary poem "A Single Woman's Bedroom," included in this collection, changed the state of poetry in China and globally. This is an important and beautiful book that should be celebrated and read by every lover of poetry interested in the ability of language and art to endow us with great power.
Recommended by Eric L.
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Ocean Vuong
[isbn]
Ocean Vuong’s new collection centers on loss and mourning, but it is also filled with playful experimentation and wry humor. The central thesis of Vuong’s work, I think, is that pain makes us more human, but it doesn’t define us. These poems pay homage to both sides of that coin.
Recommended by Keith M.
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Niina Pollari
[isbn]
Within the total universe of this aptly titled collection, grief is neither an amphibious vehicle traveling towards some deeper meaning, nor an element to be alchemized into something beautiful. Admirably, Pollari's stark, unblinking lines, written after the death of her infant daughter, chart a new path altogether by the furious light of the all-too-human capacity to love so much and expect so much. This is, in short, poetry that can bear up... (read more)
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Will Alexander
[isbn]
There's really nothing on this earth quite like a Will Alexander poetry collection. Channeling an oracular, surrealistic mode, his poetry invites something like a close encounter with the numinous, even as it simmers with friction against the muscle and guts of life's relentless materiality. In this mesmeric collection, three long poems stunningly negotiate a difficult physics of time, space, and memory, transporting readers through African... (read more)
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Kaveh Akbar
[isbn]
What I appreciate about Akbar's poetry is his open-handed posture towards mystery and the moments in life that hover just beyond or outside of language. Nowhere is this more evident than in Pilgrim Bell, his second collection, with poems that are devotional, indebted to wonder, furious at all forms of empire, and unafraid to say "the soul".
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Solmaz Sharif
[isbn]
A singular, exacting voice known for poetry that lays bare — historically, linguistically — the grisly seams of American imperialism and the military industrial complex. With this new collection, Sharif returns with characteristic lucidity and rigor, investigating similar themes in relation to contingency, (be)longing, exposure, elsewhereness, and the exilic nature of poetic language itself.
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Sylvia Plath
[isbn]
Daring, unique, thoughtful, and inventive. Plath's "I Am Vertical" holds the honor of being one of my all-time favorite poems. Like beekeepers for the honey, you'll find yourself returning to Plath for a harvest of rich verse, again and again.
Recommended by Nickolas J.
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Liz Howard
[isbn]
"Beauty is my irreparable eye / and today I became geometric."
In her otherworldly second collection, Liz Howard's signature hyper-lyricism traverses a bridge between cosmic and terrestrial realms with all the risky elegance of a high-wire walker. Easily my favourite collection of 2021, its poems of deep time and deep grief exude a kind of music that feels almost bio-luminescent — radiant as they are at the dark crossroads of historical,... (read more)
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Douglas Kearney
[isbn]
The poems in Sho are filled with a palpable, sometimes frantic, energy. It never steers away from violence. It refuses to hold your hand. This book is a profound departure from tradition but is also steeped in it, and Kearney is a truly singular, American voice. Incredible.
Recommended by Eric L.
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Tishani Doshi
[isbn]
Last year I went to an online poetry reading where Tishani Doshi read from this book and I'll never forget how hypnotic, even healing, it felt listening to its sensuous and mystical poems. I think of Doshi as the kind of poet who can quickly become your next favourite, as both a champion against cynicism and a guide to return you back to your body in its full range of grief, joy, rage, desire, and hope.
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Diane Di Prima
[isbn]
Few things have rescued me from the inertia of grief this year as much as Diane di Prima's Revolutionary Letters. Spanning a period of nearly five decades, di Prima's dispatches are vivid, yet meditative, as they imagine and invoke the possibilities of a fully liberated world — the kind of poetry you want to memorize, read aloud to friends, or tuck into your coat pocket as a protective talisman (which the new pocket-sized edition from... (read more)
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Lucie Brock Broido
[isbn]
"I've got this mystic streak in me." Though it may be a cliché to say, in this case it feels all-too true: Lucie Brock-Broido's poetry is unlike anything else I've ever read. Richly variegated, sensuous, maximalist, sonically fascinating. Delphic oracle meets Emily Dickinson. Her work is the kind that evades easy description but — to risk another cliché — will indelibly change how you read (or write) poetry forever.
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Alice Notley
[isbn]
Follow Alette down the subway stairs where your spiraling odyssey begins: journeying through surreal tunnelscapes of faces, into dark enchanted forests "full of beings," and towards the simultaneous "Past, Present," "& Future" of self-transformation. Along the way, Notley's book-length feminist epic will likely have something to say about your own transformation, leaving you dizzied yet fully awake within its mythopoetic universe.
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Jackie Wang
[isbn]
Wang's remarkable debut poetry collection comprises a frothy mixture of poems, prose, and illustrations inspired by her dream journal. Their brief microcosms are mutable, haunted, Dali-esque and darkly playful (see poem ft. an Evil Noodle) — all of them striking in their oblique confrontations with carceral logics, race, class, family, and transgenerational trauma. While I think there's plenty here to meet any reader's interest in the... (read more)
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Carl Phillips
[isbn]
What is the color of memory? With characteristic depth and lucidity, Phillips's poems bend their light through the prism of this speculation, inviting us to approach its crucial, political implications and contingencies through a quantum field of knowing, awestruck presence.
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
[isbn]
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, poet and bestselling author of The Love Songs of W. E. B. Dubois, shines in this collection of poems that turn to the writing, life, and legacy of Phillis Wheatley Peters. With the greatest precision and care, Jeffers' poetry invites readers to reconsider the biographical archives by which we've historically known Wheatley Peters, and the result of this reconsideration brings new life to her memory. A gorgeous... (read more)
Recommended by Alexis B.
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Linda Gregg
[isbn]
A modern mystic with a straightforward style.
When I think of Linda Gregg, I sometimes think of the astrological meaning of the comet Chiron, which is known as "the wounded healer." Never seeking easy consolation, her poems possess a healing quality precisely because of their capacity to fully inhabit landscapes of loss, pain, and disappointment, making, somehow, for some of the most supremely compassionate, humane poems I've ever read.
Recommended by Alexa W.
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CA Conrad
[isbn]
Reading CAConrad’s poetry often feels like reading my way back into aliveness itself, and their latest collection, the eco-poetic AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration, is no exception. Emanating from a series of (Soma)tic rituals based on the recorded sounds of extinct animals, its poems shape-shift in playful, creaturely forms, even as they broach complex (and interconnected) traumas, from state violence to the AIDS crisis. The... (read more)
Recommended by Alexa W.
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Shawn Levy
[isbn]
In A Year in the Life of Death, Shawn Levy’s provocative, insightful book of poetry based on New York Times obituaries from 2016, each poem is a tiny mystery story with the last line revealing its subject. So many made me cry. So many made me laugh. Together, they form a unique history of the 20th century full of fascinating facts, nostalgia, social and political commentary, and, of course, human stories running the gamut from... (read more)
Recommended by Gigi L.
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Joy Harjo
[isbn]
Harjo's memoir is both gritty and glittering. Her experiences with domestic abuse, poverty, and addiction are sometimes heart-wrenching, but on the other side of her journey is poetry, music, and art. A stunningly intense and beautiful read.
Recommended by Rose H.
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Joy Harjo
[isbn]
Adroitly combining poetry and prose, Harjo details her journey from leaving home as a teenager to escape abuse to becoming a celebrated poet and teacher. Compassionate, wise, and lyrical, Poet Warrior details Harjo's love of words and her deep connection with the world around her.
Recommended by Mary Jo S.
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Louise Glück
[isbn]
I am overjoyed to have a new collection from Nobel Laureate Louise Glück! These poems are beautiful and haunting, and I have many rereads ahead of me as I continue to engage with their language and consider their depths.
Recommended by Keith M.
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Amanda Gorman
[isbn]
Like so many, I was transfixed and moved by Amanda Gorman’s performance of her poem "The Hill We Climb" at President Biden's inauguration, and now I can’t wait to read her first full collection.
Recommended by Keith M.
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Andrea Gibson
[isbn]
Gibson’s poetry of love, loss, light, and survival leaves me wordless and goose-bumped, and when I found out they had a new book of poetry coming out, I nearly broke my phone hitting the Preorder button so hard.
Recommended by Deana R.
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Leigh Stein
[isbn]
Initially, you may think these poems are witty. They are. Upon reflection, you may decide these poems are piercingly honest reflections of contemporary desires, run headlong into a plague year. They are. In the dark of a sleepless night, you may feel that these poems saw through your ironic façade and got at something deeper. They did.
Recommended by Keith M.
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Natalie Diaz
[isbn]
I was drawn to Diaz’s harsh, illuminative poems about watching her brother struggle with meth addiction, but her speakers contend with many kinds of appetite. The poems collected in When My Brother Was an Aztec range between mournful, angry, reflective, funny, and red hot, but at their centers are Diaz’s observations of life on the Mojave reservation where she grew up and her dizzying aptitudes for plainspokenness and the kind of surreal... (read more)
Recommended by Rhianna W.
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Timothy Arliss OBrien
[isbn]
Most of my favorite poetry books are those with a strong concept, and this book is an exceptional example of that. Through a blend of traditional poems, and those based on memories, stories, and other forms, Happy LGBTQ Wrath Month lays out the inspiring journey of a queer person struggling with accepting themselves. The author has an effervescent magical touch in his free approach to structure and in his handling of numerous personal... (read more)
Recommended by Nicholas Y.
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