April is #NationalPoetryMonth—a special occasion where we recognize the importance of poets and poetry in our culture. To celebrate, we’ve put together a list of powerful and unforgettable collections from incredible poets, past and present.
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Instructions for Traveling West: Poems by Joy Sullivan
A vivid and inspiring poetry collection about what’s possible when we heed our instincts and honor our intuition, allowing ourselves to strike out for new territories of love, pleasure, and peace.
“This empathetic, honest, and intimate collection is chockful of poems reminding the reader to love earnestly, live freely, and pay attention.”—Kate Baer, #1 New York Times bestselling author of And Yet and What Kind of Woman
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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A Year of Last Things: Poems by Michael Ondaatje
From one of the most influential writers of his generation, a gorgeously surprising poetry collection about memory, history, and the act of looking back.
“Each new book of Michael Ondaatje’s is a literary event, but that is particularly true for his books of poetry. In A Year of Last Things he comes close to writing something like a timeless poem, ‘a memory poem’ that reflects outside and inside time at the same moment, recording the mercurial, mysterious feeling of being alive. The poems become intimate, unresolved stories, loyal to feeling and presence, the lyricism of dreams applied to narratives of lives and landscapes. A Year of Last Things is a remarkable, incomparable new collection.”—Terrance Hayes, author of So to Speak
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Thick with Trouble by Amber McBride
From National Book Award finalist Amber McBride, a mystical, transcendent poetry collection about Black womanhood in the American South.
“Reading this collection . . . is to enter a world full of beauty . . . McBride’s collection, lyrical and lilting, has an ancestral quality of timelessness, which demands reflection upon the reader’s connection to nature and their past.”—The Boston Globe
“Thick with Trouble is a collection that sings like a chorus, an evocative and ancient kind of singing, incantatory and empowered. With poetic forms that challenge and surprise, Thick with Trouble is a knowing debut that subverts perceptions with lyricism, and calls upon the supernatural and ancestral to complicate and enlighten our collective gaze.”—Rio Cortez, author of Golden Ax
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem by Nam Le
An explosive, devastating debut book of poetry from the acclaimed author of The Boat.
“Each poem in 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem stings as if Nam Le burned syllables onto the page with a pyrographic pen. These poems seethe and sing; they restlessly shapeshift as Nam Le tries to find a mode of speech or form that could capture the violent history of war and the experience of deracination. But the English language stops short and he captures that gap—and the unspeakable realms of racialized consciousness—with virtuosic and ineffable beauty.”—Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Colorfast by Rose McLarney
A haunting, intimate, and beautifully-crafted collection of poems rooted in southern Appalachia that reflects on loss and remembrance—and reaches beyond the constraints of time and place.
“To the ever-widening world of Appalachian literature, Colorfast offers a new, fresh voice with necessary perspectives as it reconsiders family stories, historical omissions and generational female burdens and elegies. Colorfast is necessary and provocative, inclusive and exploratory.”—Southern Review of Books
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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The Brush: Poems by Eliana Hernández-Pachón; Afterword by Hector Abad; Translated by Robin Myers
A wise, visionary debut on ecological and human resistance, perfect for readers of Joy Harjo and Tracy K. Smith, and fans of the earth-body artwork of Ana Mendieta.
“Flowers, bleeding bodies, and all that blooms from itself—we need poetry that sends us directly into this blossoming in all its agony, horror, and beauty. Eliana Hernández-Pachón has given us this with The Brush, a book I want everyone I know to know about.”—CAConrad, author of Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return and You Don’t Have What It Takes to Be My Nemesis
Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.
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Robert Frost: Sixteen Poems to Learn by Heart by Robert Frost and Jay Parini
Celebrate Robert Frost’s 150th birthday with a deluxe keepsake edition featuring 16 of his greatest poems—with brilliant essays highlighting his special genius and the power of memorization to unlock the magic of his language.
“The goal of this little book is to encourage readers to slow down—to listen to Frost’s words and phrases, to locate their deepest rhythms, and hear the tune of each poem as it unfolds . . . Memorizing a poem can teach us much about a poem’s structure and argument, and about the resonance of particular words. And best of all, memorization makes a poem part of our inner lives. Once committed to memory, a poem is available to us for recall at any time—and the occasions for remembering it will make themselves known to us. It isn’t something we have to work at.”
Available in Hardcover and eBook Editions.
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Being Reflected Upon by Alice Notley
A memoir in verse from one of America’s legendary poets.
Notley’s new collection is at once a window into the sources of her telepathic and visionary poetics, and a memoir through poems of her Paris-based life between 2000 and 2017, when she finished treatment for her first breast cancer. As Notley wrote these poems she realized that events during this period were connected to events in previous decades; the work moves from reminiscences of her mother and of growing up in California to meditations on illness and recovery to various poetic adventures in Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, and Edinburgh. It is also concerned with the mysteries of consciousness and the connection between the living and dead, “stream-of-consciousness” teasing out a lived physics or philosophy.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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An African Elegy: Poems by Ben Okri
This moving poetry collection from the Booker Prize–winning author finds strength and hope while reflecting on the complex issues that have burdened Africa.
First published in 1992, Ben Okri’s remarkable debut collection features poems that are now considered classics and taught in schools and universities worldwide. Here he plays with the mystique of the African continent, countering simplistic narratives of suffering that have been imposed on it with vibrant, nuanced portraits of the traditions and resilience of African peoples. An invaluable window onto Okri’s experiences as a Nigerian immigrant to the United Kingdom and as a writer discovering his calling, these poems also speak to universal truths about love, injustice, and the search for meaning.
Available in Hardcover.
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Dream Work by Mary Oliver
Newly repackaged as a Penguin paperback, an “astonishing” book of poetry from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Primitive and “one of our very best poets” (New York Times Book Review).
Dream Work, a collection of forty-five poems originally published in 1986, follows both chronologically and logically Mary Oliver’s American Primitive, which won her the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1983. The depth and diversity of perceptual awareness, so steadfast and radiant in American Primitive, continues in Dream Work. Additionally, she has turned her attention in these poems to the solitary and difficult labors of the spirit, to accepting the truth about one’s personal world, and to valuing the triumphs while transcending the failures of human relationships.
Available May 28th in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.
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German Romantic Poets by Charlotte Lee
A greatest-hits selection from some of the most popular poets of the Romantic movement, including Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel, and Heine.
Unlike the more earnest English Romantic poets, followers of the Romantic movement in Germany valued wit and humor along with beauty. Admiration for nature is also prominent in their poetry, and in particular the dramatic forests which still cover large areas of Germany. Love and death crop up repeatedly as themes in such famous works as Goethe’s “Elf King” and Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Characters from myth and folklore abound—most famously Lorelei, an enchantress who is associated with the rock of the same name on the bank of the Rhine, who is featured in several poems in this volume. Also gathered here are such favorites as Hölderlin’s “Bread and Wine,” Schiller’s “The Visit of the Gods,” Eichendorff’s “Nocturne,” and Heine’s “The Magic Month of May,” along with works by the most famous women writers of the Romantic era, including Karoline von Günderrode and Sophie Mereau.
Available in Hardcover.
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woke up no light: poems by Leila Mottley
A poignant, rousing debut book of poetry, full of life, from the former Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland, California.
“Leila Mottley writes with the introspection of Zora Neale Hurston, the righteous rage of Bobby Seales, and a lyrical wit mirroring Souls of Mischief. Each section of woke up no light is a testimony to living and thriving; and proof that one of Oakland’s mightiest heirlooms has nothing to lose . . . Poems centering the effect of street scriptures, gender roles, police brutality, and the humanity lost to celebritism; Mottley leaves no rock unturned and aims to set us all free.”—Mahogany L. Browne, author of Chrome Valley and Vinyl Moon and poet-in-residence, Lincoln Center
Available April 16th in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Harmony by Whitney Hanson
From TikTok phenomenon Whitney Hanson, a brand-new collection of poems exploring the cadences of love, loss, grief, and healing.
“Poet and TikTok sensation Whitney Hanson has penned Harmony, which explores all the complexities that life offers, highlighting her own vulnerability and prompting the same from her audience. Hanson crafts poems about grief, comparing the processes of human emotion to those of writing a song . . . To put it simply, Hanson indeed makes music with her poetry.”—Shondaland
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook and Audio Editions.
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Pacific Power & Light: Poems by Michael Dickman
The award-winning poet returns to his homeplace in the Pacific Northwest, where the neighborhood simmers with the chemical presence of human trouble and sparks of beauty coexist with danger.
“This riot of nature, always troubled by the artificial, conjures a green thought in a green shade. Only in Dickman’s landscape, nature’s green spectrum turns corrosive, and veers towards a shade that glares and discomfits. No one sees and hears the world quite like this poet whose every line thrums with specificity.”—Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Roman Stories
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Tarta Americana by J. Michael Martinez
A suite of poems that channels the legendary singer-songwriter Ritchie Valens to examine and question mid-twentieth-century conceptions of race and art, identity and desire.
“For too long, literary critics have explained Hispanic American literature as concerned mainly with “hybridity.” But the extreme warping of our political landscape demands the discovery and harnessing of new cultural properties. Enter the master of multi-perspectival narrative. J. Michael Martinez has constructed an epic . . . Tarta Americana is not only a riveting poetic-biopic of Richie Valens, but a way of understanding culture-making itself.”—Rodrigo Toscano
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Migration Letters: Poems by M. Nzadi Keita
A poetry collection that reflects on intimate aspects of Black history, culture, and identity, revealing an uncommon gaze on working-class Philadelphia from the 1960s to the present day.
“As if entering a darkroom, Sister M. Nzadi Keita has entered the silences surrounding Black working-class migrants, transforming their lives, and carved that quiet, steady living into photographs. We see their journeys out of Southern kitchens and sawmills to Philadelphia homes and churches, newly integrated schools, resonant Civil Rights trauma, and college campuses. Into these disregarded interiors, her poems breathe air.”—Sonia Sanchez
Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.
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Mural by Mahmoud Darwish; Translated by John Berger and Rema Hammami
Poetry from former national poet of Palestine, illustrated by original drawings by John Berger.
“An exquisitely designed book, enhanced by several of Berger’s evocative drawings . . . Mural is a spiraling and circuitous poem, alive with swerves and sly twists, moving along corridors that dead-end only to open out unexpectedly into detours and hidden passageways. That single adjective, conspicuous in Darwish’s spare style, presages the very structure of Mural.”—Eric Ormsby, Bookforum
Available April 23rd in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.
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Rangikura: Poems by Tayi Tibble
A fiery second collection of poetry from the acclaimed Indigenous New Zealand writer that U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo calls, “One of the most startling and original poets of her generation.”
At once a coming-of-age and an elegy to the traumas born from colonization, especially the violence enacted against indigenous women, Rangikura interrogates not only the poets’ pain, but also that of her ancestors. The intimacy of these poems will move readers to laughter and tears. Speaking to herself, sometimes to the reader, these poems arc away from and return to their ancestral roots to imagine the end of the world and a new day. They invite us into the swirl of nostalgia and exhaustion produced in the pursuit of an endless summer. (“My heart goes out like an abandoned swan boat/ghosting along a lake”). They are a new highpoint from a writer of endless talent.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Spectral Evidence: Poems by Gregory Pardio
A powerful meditation on Blackness, beauty, faith, and the force of law, from the beloved award-winning author of Digest and Air Traffic.
“When one of America’s foremost poets publishes a collection for the first time in nearly a decade it is a major event . . . As ever Pardlo moves through poetic registers with ease, from high to low and back again, as he witnesses the world in all its terrible beauty. From fallen heroes of professional wrestling (seriously) to this country’s infinite hostility to its Black citizens, Pardlo’s is the poetic eye (and heart) we need right now.”—Jonny Diamond, Literary Hub
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Change Your Life: Essential Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke developed one of the most singular poetic styles of the twentieth century. Visionary yet always anchored in the real world, his poems give profound expression to fundamental questions of love and death, of the chaos of the modern world as well as the spiritual consolation of art and nature.
Change Your Life draws from across Rilke’s career to offer a comprehensive view of his most essential poetry, featuring major selections from the great Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus alongside less frequently anthologised work. In these dazzling new translations by acclaimed poet Martyn Crucefix, Rilke’s poems beguile with fresh insight and mystery.
Available in Trade Paperback.
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Stubble Archipelago by Wayne Koestenbaum
Wild new adventures in word-infatuated flânerie from a celebrated literary provocateur.
This book of thirty-six poetic bulletins by the humiliation-advice-giver Wayne Koestenbaum will teach you how to cruise, how to dream, how to decode a crowded consciousness, how to find nuggets of satisfaction in unaccustomed corners, and how to sew a language glove roomy enough to contain materials gathered while meandering. Koestenbaum’s poems are comic, ribald, compressed, symphonic. They take liberties with ordinary language, and open up new pockets for sensation in the sorrowing overcoat of the “now.” Imagine: the training wheels have been removed from poetry’s bicycle, and the wheeling flâneur is finally allowed a word pie equal to fantasy’s appetite. Stubble—a libidinal detail—matters when you’re stranded on the archipelago of your most unsanctioned yet tenaciously harbored impulses.
Available in Trade Paperback.
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