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Celebrate National Poetry Month April 2025 |
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What remains : the collected poems of Hannah Arendt
by Hannah Arendt
The German-Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is world-renowned for her work on totalitarianism, the human condition, and the banality of evil. Not many people know that she also wrote poems--yet the language of poetry, especially that of Goethe and Schiller, was a banister for Arendt's thinking throughout much of her adult life. Between 1923 and 1961, Arendt wrote seventy-four poems, many of them acting as signposts in her biography, marking moments of great joy, love, loss, melancholia, and remembrance. Now, for the first time in English, Samantha Rose Hill and Genese Grill present these intensely personal poems in chronological order, taking us from the zenith of the Weimar Republic to the Cold War, and from Marburg, Germany, to New York, New York
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Foxglovewise : poems
by Ange Mlinko
"A new collection of poetry from Ange Mlinko, the author of Venice, whose poetry is "irresistible" (Los Angeles Review of Books)"
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If nothing
by Matthew Nienow
"In If Nothing, the speaker confronts addiction, the learned behaviors and expectations of masculinity, fatherhood, and the feelings of guilt and shame, attempting to understand them better and in doing so, find redemption and forgiveness. The poems often call us to listen to ourselves closer and ask, how do we forgive ourselves? This is a book that wants readers to feel their feelings without shame or remorse. The tension between the physical and emotional, like the imagery of crafting with sharp tools in concert with the speaker's inebriated state, is well-wrought and moves us to feel the precariousness and delicate nature of the speaker's physical and emotional reality and the vulnerability that's exposed by the collision of the two. Earnest and vulnerable poems strive toward redemption, understanding, self-awareness, and the possibility of joy. The book feels almost like a second coming-of-age anthem, or one for the "real" coming of age-the one we all experience mid-life when things get real in a newway"
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This is the honey : an anthology of contemporary Black poets
by Kwame Alexander
Exploring joy, love, origin, race, resistance and praise, this beautiful poetry anthology, featuring works from the most prominent and promising Black poets and writers of our time, is filled with poignant and delightful imagery, music and raised fists.
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You are here : poetry in the natural world
by Ada Limo´n
The 24th U.S. Poet Laureate presents 50 previously unpublished poems from some of the nation's most accomplish poets, including Joy Harjo, Jericho Brown and Aime Nezhukumatathil, who offer an intimate model of how we relate to the natural world, illuminating the many ways our landscapes—both literal and literary—are changing.
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My life : growing up native in America
by Illuminative
A moving collection of 20 powerful essays, poems and more that capture and celebrate the modern Native American experience, featuring entries by Angeline Boulley, Madison Hammond, Kara Roselle Smith and many more. Illustrations.
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Forest of noise : poems
by Mosab Abu Toha
"Barely thirty years old, Mosab Abu Toha was already a well-known poet when the current siege of Gaza began. After the Israeli army bombed and destroyed his house, pulverizing a library he had painstakingly built for community use, he and his family fledfor their safety. Not for the first time in their lives. Somehow, amid the chaos, Abu Toha kept writing poems. These are those poems. Uncannily clear, direct, and beautifully tuned, they form one of the most astonishing works of art wrested from wartime...Moving between glimpses of life in relative peacetime and absurdist poems about surviving in a barely liveable occupation, Forest of Noise invites a wide audience into an experience that defies the imagination--even as it is watched live"
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The moon that turns you back
by Hala Alyan
A diaspora of memories runs through this poetry collection--a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and houses hold archival material for one another, tracing paths between Brooklyn, Beirut, and Jerusalem. Boundaries and borders blur between space and time andpoetic form--small banal moments of daily life live within geopolitical brutalities and, vice versa, the desire for stability lives in familiarity with displacement. These poems take stock of who and what can displace you from home and from your own body--and, conversely, the kind of resilience, tenacity, and love that can bring you back into yourself and into the context of past and future generations. Hala Alyan asks, What stops you from transforming into someone or something else? When you have lived a life in flux, how do you find rest?
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Paper boat : new and selected poems, 1961-2023
by Margaret Atwood
Spanning six decades of work—from her earliest beginnings to brand-new poems—this volume provides an extraordinary career-spanning collection from one of the most revered poets and storytellers of our age.
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With my back to the world : poems
by Victoria Chang
"A new collection of poetry inspired by the work of Agnes Martin, exploring topics of feminism, art, depression, and grief, by the author of the prizewinning collection Obit"
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Water, water : poems
by Billy Collins
"In more than sixty new poems, Billy Collins writes with joy and wonder about the beauty and irony of daily life. The best poetry, he believes, begins with clarity and ends in mystery, and in Water, Water we encounter a writer endlessly astonished by theworld all around. Turning his eye to the cat drinking from the swimming pool or the nurse calling your name in the waiting room or the astronaut reading Emily Dickinson while orbiting earth, Collins captures images and moments that mean so much more thanthey might initially seem. With a voice both simple and melodic, hospitable and lyrical, the poetry of Billy Collins asks each of us to slow down and notice the commonplace in order to discover the sublime. No wonder The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both call him one of America's favorite poets"
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Robert Frost : sixteen poems to learn by heart
by Robert Frost
"Poet and Frost biographer Jay Parini selects sixteen poems by Robert Frost to learn by heart. Each poem is accompanied by a short interpretative essay by Parini illuminating the poem's stylistic and imaginative features"
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Blues in stereo : the early works of Langston Hughes, 1921-1927
by Langston Hughes
"Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes was most well-known for his poems, novels, and plays that highlight Black American life in post-slavery America. James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri and began writing poetry when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois. After graduating from high school, he spent a year in Mexico followed by a year at Columbia University. During this time, he worked as an assistant cook, a launderer, and a busboy. He also traveled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman before finishing his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. Setting the stage for an enduring and genre-defining career, Hughes wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including their love of music, laughter, and language, alongside their suffering. He began writing short pieces in his personal notebooks before seeking a home for his resonant verse. Over the course of his four-decade career, Hughes published his first book of poetry with Knopf in 1926 as well as poems with Yale University and small, grassroots literary magazines. Today, he stands as one of the greatest literary innovators. But how did this literary giant rise to such heights? Blues inStereo zooms in on Hughes's early work (1919-1929). National Book Award finalist Danez Smith joins as curator for this work, offering an introduction on Hughes's lyrical, evocative, and award-winning poetry and notes on the formation of his signature style and craft. Collected from libraries and little-known publications across the country, Blues in Stereo features some of Hughes's earliest undiscovered writings; the collection of his poems published in The Crisis, a monthly publication form the NAACP edited by W.E.B. DuBois from 1910-1934; and even an original unreleased play co-written with DuBois, complete with a full score. This beautifully rendered collection of Hughes's early works is sure to become a bookshelf staple"
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A year of last things : poems
by Michael Ondaatje
The influential and internationally acclaimed author of seven novels, including the Booker Prize-winning The English Patient that became a major film that won Academy Awards, returns to poetry with a collection of prose that merges memory with the present.
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Light me down : the new & collected poems of Jean Valentine
by Jean Valentine
"In these last prayerful poems by Jean Valentine, the poet visits loss, death, and transitional states. Full of longing, connections, and intergenerational knowledge, Valentine continues the mystical journey that has carried her through a lifetime devoted to poetry. Spirits connect. Guides are everywhere as she is "leaving all worlds behind." Love doesn't disappear but is steadfast and without boundaries. A poet of deep tenderness for everything living, from a dying cricket to her living and lost friends, Valentine is full of gratitude for this world, writing: "This is happiness. Old life,/ I'm glad, all my rubbed life/ I was found,/ I was written on a wall in air." The reader too is full of gratitude for these moving last missives from a great poet"
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Real toads, imaginary gardens : on reading and writing poetry forensically
by Paisley Rekdal
"What makes reading a poem unlike reading anything else? In Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens, acclaimed poet and teacher Paisley Rekdal demonstrates how to observe the building blocks of a poem--including its diction, form, imagery, and rhythm--and construct an interpretation of its meaning. Using guided close readings and nearly 40 creative and critical 'experiments,' this book shows how a poem takes shape through the intersection of all its lyric elements. Drawing on the work of poets from William Shakespeare to Jericho Brown, Real Toads, Imaginary Gardens reveals how to read and write critically, and how to appreciate--and master--the exhilarating craft of poetry"
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I Sing the Salmon Home : Poems from Washington State by Rena PriestFor this unique collection celebrating salmon, Washington State Poet Laureate and Lummi tribal member Rena Priest gathered poems from more than 150 Washington poets ranging from first graders to tribal elders, all inspired by the Northwest's beloved, iconic salmon. A diverse chorus of voices, they join together in poems that praise salmon's heroic journey, beauty, courage, and generosity and witness the threats salmon face from pollution, dams and warming oceans.
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English as a second language and other poems by Jaswinder BolinaWarm tenderness and fiery critique sit side-by-side in Bolina's English as A Second Language, a collection that skewers, laments, and celebrates America with intelligence, humility, and a disarming sense of humor. Warm tenderness and fiery critique sit side-by-side in Bolina's English as A Second Language, a collection that skewers, laments, and celebrates America with intelligence, humility, and a disarming sense of humor.
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The diaspora sonnets
by Oliver De la Paz
"The sonnet proves formally malleable as de la Paz breaks and rejoins its tradition throughout this collection, embarking on a broader conversation about what fits and how one adapts--from the restrained use of rhyme in "Diaspora Sonnet in the Summer with the River Water Low" and carefully metered "Diaspora Sonnet Imagining My Father's Uncertainty and Nothing Else" to the hybridized "Diaspora Sonnet at the Feeders Before the Freeze." A series of "Chain Migration" poems viscerally punctuate the sonnets, giving witness to the labor and sacrifice of the immigrant experience, as do a series of hauntingly beautiful pantoums"
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Weaving sundown in a scarlet light : fifty poems for fifty years
by Joy Harjo
"In this gemlike volume, Harjo selects her best poems from across fifty years, beginning with her early discoveries of her own voice and ending with moving reflections on our contemporary moment. Generous notes on each poem offer insight into Harjo's inimitable poetics as she takes inspiration from Navajo horse songs and jazz, reckons with home and loss, and listens to the natural messengers of the earth"
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The tiny journalist : poems
by Naomi Shihab Nye
"Internationally beloved poet Naomi Shihab Nye places her Palestinian American identity center stage in her latest full-length poetry collection for adults. The collection is inspired by the story of Janna Jihad Ayyad, the 'Youngest Journalist in Palestine,' who at age 7 began capturing videos of anti-occupation protests using her mother's smartphone. Nye draws upon her own family's roots in a West Bank village near Janna's hometown to offer empathy and insight to the young girl's reporting. Long an advocate for peaceful communication across all boundaries, Nye's poems in The Tiny Journalist put a human face on war and the violence that divides us from each other"
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Shout : a poetry memoir
by Laurie Halse Anderson
A poetic memoir and urgent call-to-action by the award-winning author of Speak blends free-verse reflections with deeply personal stories from her life to rally today's young people to stand up and fight the abuses, censorship and hatred of today's world. Simultaneous eBook.
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Devotions : the selected poems of Mary Oliver
by Mary Oliver
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet offers a carefully curated selection of her definitive writings in a volume spanning more than five decades of her esteemed literary career. By the author of Felicity.
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Anybody : poems
by Ari Banias
""One of the most exciting new voices I've read in American poetry."--Eavan Boland. In Anybody, Ari Banias takes up questions of recognition and belonging: how boundaries are drawn and managed, the ways he and she, us and them, here and elsewhere are kept separate, and at what cost identities and selves are forged. Moving through iconic and imagined landscapes, Anybody confronts the strangeness of being alive and of being a restlessly gendered, queer, emotive body. Wherever the poet turns--the cruising spaces of Fire Island, a city lake, a Greek island, a bodega-turned-coffee-shop--he finds the charge of boundedness and signification, the implications of what it means to be a this instead of a that. Witty, tender, and original, these poems pierce the constructs that define our lives"
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Eyes bottle dark with a mouthful of flowers by Jake SkeetsRooted in Navajo history and thought, these poems show what has been brewing in an often forgotten part of the American literary landscape, an important language, beautiful and bone dense. Sculptural, ambitious, and defiantly vulnerable, the poems of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers are coal that remains coal, despite the forces that conspire for diamond, for electricity.
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If they come for us : poems / Fatimah Ashgar.
by Fatimah Asghar
In a debut poetry collection, the co-creator of the Emmy-nominated web series Brown Girls openly shares her experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in America by weaving together personal and marginalized people's histories. Original.
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Call us what we carry : poems
by Amanda Gorman
The presidential inaugural poet—and unforgettable new voice in American poetry—presents a collection of poems that includes the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States.
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Hybrida : poems
by Tina Chang
"A timely, stirring, and confident examination of mixed- race identity, violence, and history skillfully rendered through the lens of motherhood. In Hybrida, Tina Chang confronts the complexities of raising a mixed-race child during an era of political upheaval in the United States. She ruminates on the relationship between her son's blackness and his safety, exploring the dangers of childhood in a post-Trayvon Martin era by invoking racialized roles in fairy tales. Meditating on the lives of Michael Brown, Leiby Kletzky, and Noemi Ãlvarez Quillay--lost at the hands of individuals entrusted to protect them--Chang creates hybrid poetic forms that mirror her investigation of racial tensions. Hybrida is a twenty-first-century tale that is equal parts a mother's love and her fury, an ambitious and revelatory exploration of identity"
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American melancholy : poems
by Joyce Carol Oates
A latest poetry collection by the National Book Award-winning author of We Were the Mulvaneys observes the human heart and mind while exploring subjects ranging from politics and racism to poverty and loss. 15,000 first printing.
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Beauty is a verb : the new poetry of disability
by Jennifer Bartlett
"Beauty is a Verb is the first of its kind: a high-quality anthology of poetry by American poets with physical disabilities. Poems and essays alike consider how poetry, coupled with the experience of disability, speaks to the poetics of each poet included. The collection explores first the precursors whose poems had a complex (and sometimes absent) relationship with disability, such as Vassar Miller, Larry Eigner, and Josephine Miles. It continues with poets who have generated the Crip Poetics Movement, such as Petra Kuppers, Kenny Fries, and Jim Ferris. Finally, the collection explores the work of poets who don't necessarily subscribe to the identity of "crip-poetics" and have never before been published in this exact context. These poets include Bernadette Mayer, Rusty Morrison, Cynthia Hogue, and C. S. Giscombe. The book crosses poetry movements--from narrative to language poetry--and speaks to and about a number of disabilities including cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, multiple sclerosis, and aphasia due to stroke, among others"
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Essential essays : culture, politics, and the art of poetry
by Adrienne Rich
Presents 25 essays—culled from the works of an award-winning poet, influential essayist, radical feminist and major intellectual voice of her generation—that unite the political, personal and poetical and demonstrate her revolutionary views on social justice.
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Pierce County Library System
3005 112th St. E, Tacoma, Washington 98446
253-548-3300mypcls.org |
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