Popular Poetry Books for Adults
Hundreds of books are added to the Library's collection each month. Here are the most popular Poetry books for adults.
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Couplets: A Love Story
"A dazzling, genre-bending debut about one woman's coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming undone"-- Provided by publisher.
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I Do Everything I'm Told: Poems
"Bristling with restlessness and wit, Megan Fernandes' I Do Everything I'm Told explores disobedience and worship, false beloveds, possessiveness, and long nights of solitude. Its poems span thousands of miles, as a masterful crown of sonnets starts in Shanghai, then flies through Brooklyn, Lisbon, Palermo, Los Angeles, Paris, Philadelphia, and finally, somewhere only language can reach, where the speaker waits for a revelation. Across four sections, poems navigate through the terrain of loss: the loss of relationships, the loss of a promised future. But amid devastation, they push us to consider joy as a necessity-in the smallest interactions, Fernandes observes that which moves us forward. "I do not track the world by beauty but joy," a speaker says. "That first bite into the soft carrot of tagine stew while a / storm wailed over the East River. The misfit raccoon / bouncing on trash bins in Central Park." Formally and sonically adventurous, I Do Everything I'm Told is the book for a generation who seeks to cross the distances between one another and rediscover an intimacy nearly taken by despair"-- Provided by publisher.
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Feast
"Feast offers abundance and nourishment through language, and reaches toward a place an immigrant might call home. The poems in this collection-many of which revolve around food and its cultural significances-examine the brown body's relationship with nourishment. Poems delve into what it means to be brown in a white world, and how that encourages (or restricts) growth. Feeds its readers by employing lush sonics and imagery unafraid of being Filipino and of being Asian American"-- Provided by publisher.
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The Twenty-ninth Year: Poems
For Hala Alyan, twenty-nine is a year of transformation and upheaval, a year in which the past-- memories of family members, old friends and past lovers, the heat of another land, another language, a different faith-- winds itself around the present. Hala's ever-shifting, subversive verse sifts together and through different forms of forced displacement and the tolls they take on mind and body. Poems leap from war-torn cities in the Middle East, to an Oklahoma Olive Garden, a Brooklyn brownstone; from alcoholism to recovery; from a single woman to a wife. This collection summons breathtaking chaos, one that seeps into the bones of these odes, the shape of these elegies. A vivid catalog of heartache, loneliness, love and joy, The Twenty-Ninth Year is an education in looking for home and self in the space between disparate identities.
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The Essential June Jordan
"A collection drawn from June Jordan's previous books"-- Provided by publisher.
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We Had Our Reasons: Teníamos Nuestros Razones / Escrito Por Ricardo Ruiz Y Otros Mexicanos Trabajadores Del Este De Washington ; Traducciones De Brianna Salinas
"We Had Our Reasons is a collection of poems created by Ricardo Ruiz in collaboration with other members of his Mexican farm community in Eastern Washington. The poems, vivid and pointed, guide the reader through the thoughts and struggles that come with the decision to leave one's home in Mexico, and travel to this remote, rural community of the United States. Through the book access is provided to readers; stories that have gone untold for generations are now shared, evoking conversation at home and within the community due to the commonality of experiences. Biographies and transcripts follow the poems, showcasing the origins of the stories and the people in the book"--Publisher.
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Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
"Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away-- loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it -- that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard" -- publisher description.
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Thirst: Poems
Thirst, a collection of forty-three new poems from the Pulitzer Prize-winner Mary Oliver, introduces two new directions in the poet's work. Grappling with grief at the death of her beloved partner of over forty years, she strives to experience sorrow as a path to spiritual progress, grief as part of loving and not its end. And within these pages she chronicles for the first time her discovery of faith, without abandoning the love of the physical world that has been a hallmark of her work for four decades. In three stunning long poems, Oliver explores the dimensions and tests the parameters of religious doctrine, asking of being good, for example, "To what purpose? / Hope of Heaven? Not that. But to enter / the other kingdom: grace, and imagination, / and the multiple sympathies: to be as a leaf, a rose,/ a dolphin." (syndetics)
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Sleeping With the Moon: Poems
PEN Oakland National Literary Award, 2008 Colleen J. McElroy's poetry shoots for the moon, and takes it in, too, in one way after another. The collection's award-winning poems animate women's experiences of sex, shopping, and dancing, while offering telling insight into the struggles and silver lining of lust, love, illness, and aging. Rich with vivid imagery and candid storytelling, Sleeping with the Moon takes readers on moonlit adventures under the night sky, through the barroom's smoky haze, and under the covers. ...Beware: such delicate sights have driven more than one woman to despair instead she watched him breathe-- relishing for a moment that secret space where night grows soft and the moon's detumescence forgives-- and where if this jeweled light holds they might strip themselves of years if only for one night --from "In Praise of Older Women" (syndetics)
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The Rose That Grew From Concrete
Tupac Shakur's most intimate and honest thoughts were uncovered only after his death with the instant classic The Rose That Grew from Concrete . His talent was unbounded a raw force that commanded attention and respect. His death was tragic--a violent homage to the power of his voice. His legacy is indomitable--as vibrant and alive today as it has ever been. This collection of deeply personal poetry is a mirror into the legendary artist's enigmatic world and its many contradictions. Written in his own hand from the time he was nineteen, these seventy-two poems embrace his spirit, his energy--and his ultimate message of hope. (syndetics)
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