Prince George's County Memorial Library System: Diverse Voices: Poetry Month 2026

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,

Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,

Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man...

- Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself"

In this Issue:

Books for Teens

Books for Adults

And, Too, the Fox
by Ada Limón

Brief text and lush illustrations are paired in this joyous poem about a fox.

Black Diamond Kings: Heroes of Negro League Baseball
by Charles R. Smith, illustrated by Adrian Brandon

Baseball has been and always will be America's pastime. And with the creation of the Negro leagues, men who were denied the chance to play professionally were finally able to participate in the sport they loved. The Negro leagues were always a richness of talent; it provided a space for community and inspired a passion for baseball for all who came to watch. Nothing beat watching iconic players like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Willie Wells. They, along with the nine other players celebrated in this collection, changed the trajectory of baseball forever with their incredible versatility in both skill and athleticism.--

I Love My People: A Child's Celebration of Black Culture
by Kim Singleton, illustrated by Kim Holt

With scenes from family gatherings, Juneteenth and Kwanzaa celebrations, neighborhood, home, and church, and mini-profiles of influential contemporary and historical figures, I Love My People takes readers on an energizing tour of Black culture.

The Illustrated Walt Whitman: 25 Essential Poems by null

The Illustrated Walt Whitman: 25 Essential Poems

Lush and evocative, this treasury of Walt Whitman's classic poetry will be a household favorite for generations. Bound and curated, this full-color collage illustrated beauty will educate young readers while delighting the senses.

Queer and Fearless: Poems Celebrating the Lives of LGBTQ+ Heroes
by Rob Sanders, illustrated by Harry Woodgate

Learn about the lives of some of the most important LGBTQ+ heroes in this unique picture book that combines poetry and biographical information to honor those at the forefront of LGBTQ+ history.

When the World Is Puddle-Wonderful
by E.E. Cummings; illustrated by Blanca Gómez

Vivid, joyful poetry and bright, whimsical artwork combine in a delightful picture book collection of E. E. Cummings's verse that tracks the seasons of the year.

Books for Teens

Black Girl You Are Atlas
by Renée Watson, illustrated by Ekua Holmes

Poet Renee Watson looks back at her childhood and urges readers to look forward at their futures with love, understanding, and celebration in this fully-illustrated poetry collection.

Grace Notes: Poems about Families
by Naomi Shihab Nye

A collection of poems about family and the love we share with one another throughout life's peaks and valleys.

Knucklehead: Poems
by Tony Keith Jr

While society often assigns the label 'knucklehead' to kids with attitude problems, this . . . poetry collection by spoken word poet and hip-hop educator Tony Keith Jr. subverts that narrow way of thinking and empathizes with young people who are misunderstood and unheard. There are poems about the power of language to transcend the racist and homophobic constructs of a society prejudging Black boys. There are poems that serve as a salve for a world that inflicts hurt, poems that offer a beacon of hope for the curious and questioning, and poems that transform the way people love Black gay boys and men. This is a journey of self-discovery through history, family, friendship, and falling in love.

Lady Sunflower: Stories, Songs, and Poems from the Desk of Kill.Gertrude
by Sierra Shuck-Sparer

Lady Sunflower is an achingly poignant collection written by Sierra Shuck-Sparer when she found herself grappling with the unimaginable: high-risk medulloblastoma. At the age of fifteen, Sierra was thrust into her harrowing battle against Gertrude (the name she gave her cancer). She faced relentless treatments and surgeries all while trying to retain her identity as a teenager heading into her college years. Sierra chronicled her journey through diagnosis, relapses, and treatment stages using a remarkable blend of heart-rending poetry, introspective essays and songs, zines, and curated playlists.

Books for Adults

Autopsy (of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob): (Poems of Rage, Love, Sex, and Sadness)
by Avan Jogia

Avan Jogia delivers a bright and acidic poetry collection on fame, rage, love, and sadness.Part boozy lovesick rage and part personal reflection on the nature of fame, Autopsy (of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob) is a sharp, tantalizing collection of poems examining Avan's relationship with ego, idolatry, love as an act of worship, rage as an act of prayer, and sadness as confession. Through vivid imagery (and sometimes startling honesty) Avan cuts himself open and observes the false gods he has worshipped, the ways he has sinned, and exhumes a version of himself that looks like someone we all know: a person searching for the means to cure pain, mend the wounds of insecurity, and satiate cravings for love.

A Bit Much: Poems
by Lyndsay Rush

The debut poetry collection from Lyndsay Rush (aka @maryoliversdrunkcousin) is a humorous and joyful celebration of big feelings, tender truths, and hard-won wisdom, for fans of Maggie Smith, Kate Baer, and Kate Kennedy.

Bloodmercy
by I. S. Jones

In I.S. Jones's stunning and evocative debut collection, Cain and Abel are reimagined as sisters whose care for each other becomes increasingly fraught-the siblings vicious as they vie for the attention of a negligent father. Parallel to this, their bodies budding within and against the still-forming landscape, the girls navigate the shame of Eve's sin while coming into their own sexuality. Found in the space between the Old Testament and the modern world, the girls gaze heavenward and pose enduring questions to God.

Close Escapes
by Stephen Kuusisto

Navigating a sightless world with intelligence and dark humor, Close Escapes searches for an answer to our earthly existence by way of visions only the blind can see. As Kuusisto moves forward through meditations on beauty, "dark joy," loss, aging, and the afterlife, he also reaches back, talking to writers, musicians, and thinkers of the past--Orwell, Marvin Bell, Salvatore Quasimodo. Readers, alongside Kuusisto, are left reaching for that "frail wisdom," for an answer to the question of our earthly existence.

Glitter Road: Poems
by January Gill O'Neil

Glitter Road reflects on the end of a marriage, loss, and a new relationship against the backdrop of a Mississippi season. She explores the history and legacy of Emmett Till, how his story is braided with hers, and how race binds us all together. These poems reclaim the vulnerable, intimate parts of a life in transition and celebrate womanhood through awakenings, landscapes, meanders, and possibilities. She declares, 'I am done telling the kinder story. I am a myth of my own making' --

Glory, Too: Poems
by Nikki Grimes

A soul-stirring collection of poetry that delves into the depths of faith, hope, and the human experience by one of America's preeminent black poets.

Lonely Women Make Good Lovers
by Keetje Kuipers

These daring and deeply sexy poems are bold with the embodied, earthy, and startlingly sensual. These unforgettable love poems -- queer, complicated, and almost always compromised -- engage a poetics of humility, leaning into the painful tendernesses of unbridgeable distance. In this book, astonishingly intimate poems of marriage collide with the fetishization of freedom and the terror of desire. At times valiant and at others self-excoriating, they are flush with the hard-won knowledge of the difficulties and joys of living in relation.

My Perfect Cognate
by Natalie Scenters-Zapico

My Perfect Cognate interrogates the connections and contrasts at the sharp edges of her in-betweens: violence and softness, motherhood and isolation, the border between the United States and Mexico, where the author and her mother were often stopped and interrogated. Natalie Scenters-Zapico mines the depths of linguistic cognate theory to write poems that go beyond translation and mistranslation. We find hope in a translingual landscape that breaks open borders.

Nursery Rhymes in Black: Poems
by Latorial Faison

A poetic recollection of race, roots, culture, and identity. Paying homage to the memory and work of elders and ancestors, Latorial Faison remembers her own matriarch, mother, grandmother--the rich memories of having grown up in rural, historic Southampton County, Virginia.

Primordial: Poems
by Mai Der Vang

A groundbreaking investigation into the collective trauma and resilience experienced by Hmong people and communities, the ongoing cultural and environmental repercussions of the war in Vietnam, the lives of refugees afterward, and the postmemory carried by their descendants. Primordial is a crucial turn to the ecological and generational impact of violence, a powerful and rousing meditation on climate, origin, and fate. With profound and attentive care, Vang addresses the plight of the saola, an extremely rare and critically endangered animal native to the Annamite Mountains in Laos and Vietnam, and examines the saola's relationship to Hmong refugee identity and cosmology and a shared sense of exile, precarity, privacy, and survival. Written during a difficult pregnancy and postpartum period, Vang's poems are urgent stays against extinction..

Savings Time: Poems
by Roya Marsh

A poetry collection exploring the dueling Black rage and Black joy inherent to grief and healing in a broken world, from the Lambda Literary Award-nominated author of dayliGht.

Set Me Free: The Good News of God's Relentless Pursuit (Poetry and Essays) by Lecrae Moore

Set Me Free: The Good News of God's Relentless Pursuit
by Lecrae Moore

Penned by GRAMMY award-winning artist and New York Times bestselling author Lecrae, Set Me Free is a powerful visual collection of poetry and essays that explores what it means to be spiritually free in a world that is anything but.

The Singing Word: 168 Years of Atlantic Poetry by Walt Hunter

The Singing Word: 168 Years of Poetry from The Atlantic
edited by Walt Hunter

An ode to America's people, land, and spirit, this stunning collection features a breadth of contemporary and historical poetry from the Atlantic magazine's 168-year archive. Offering readers an essential understanding of American canon and the evolving nation its poets have yearned to capture--the poetry of The Atlantic is the poetry of America.

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World by null

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World
edited by Ada Limon

Published in association with the Library of Congress and edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, a singular collection of fifty poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by our most celebrated writers.