English Poetry Literature

The last book written by the most famous literary critic of his generation, on the sustaining power of poetry.

Timothy is on probation. It's a strange word - something that happens to other kids, to delinquents, not to kids like him. And yet, he is under house arrest for the next year. He must check in weekly with a probation officer and a therapist and keep a journal for an entire year. And mostly, he has to stay out of trouble. But when he must take drastic measures to help his struggling family, staying out of trouble proves more difficult than Timothy ever thought it would be.

Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.

Prodigy Akiane Kramarik shares her artwork, poetry, and the fascinating story surrounding her talent. Growing up in a home with an atheistic mother and a non-participating Catholic father did not stop four-year-old Akiane Kramarik from finding God. This girl's dreams began a conversation in the home that has eventually brought them all to Christianity and the world's attention. Akiane: Her Life, Her Art, Her Poetry is a collection of the best of Akiane's full-color paintings and poetry created from ages 4 to 10.

I want you to know that I see you. I want you to know that even if no one else does, even if you are a ghost in this bookshop, or just the static floating across the screen of your computer, wherever you’re reading this, I see you. I see you in the dark and I see you in the grey. I see you as a story, as words I have spoken or may yet speak. Maybe only in a memory or a dream. I see your hands and your arms and your body and your legs and your face and I see what you have been and what you will be.

Doing Time: For the prison writers whose work is included in this anthology, it means more than "serving a sentence"; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one's humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers' organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. The contest honors the best short stories, plays, essays, and poems among hundreds submitted annually by men and women nationwide.

In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'". It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared.

Adopting the methodology of the music charts, The Classic Fifty Poems presents the "top 50" poems of all time. Newly revised, and read by an ensemble of contemporary poets, The Classic Fifty Poems is a feast for poetry lovers.

In the gentle world of one of England’s beautiful old cathedral towns, crisis looms: Funds are short, and the cathedral is in need of major repair. One faction of the community argues that the obvious solution is to abolish the expensive, and nowadays rather irrelevant, boys’ choir. But of course, there are those who disagree: the choir school’s headmaster, a conscientious scholar somewhat out of his depth with his elusive, poetical wife; the cathedral organist and choirmaster, brilliant, wayward, and in love with the lead chorister’s married mother; the former lead chorister, now twenty-three and directionless....

With passion and wit, Mary Oliver skillfully imparts expertise from her long, celebrated career as a disguised poet. She walks listeners through exactly how a poem is built, from meter and rhyme, to form and diction, to sound and sense, drawing on poems by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others. This handbook is an invaluable glimpse into Oliver’s prolific mind—a must-have for all poetry-lovers.

This book is a compilation of small observations and musings. It's filled with moments of reflection and a love letter to simple joys: passing a simple blade of grass on the sidewalk, the freedom of peeing outdoors late at night, or the way a hand-built ceramic mug feels when it's full of warm tea on a chilly morning. It's a catalog and a compendium that examines the complicated experience of being all too human and interacting with a complex, confounding, breathtaking world ... and a reminder to stop and be awake and alive in yourself.

Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in 1400, lived a surprisingly eventful life. He served with the Duke of Clarence and with Edward III, and in 1359 was taken prisoner in France and ransomed. Through his wife, Philippa, he gained the patronage of John of Gaunt, which helped him carve out a career at Court. His posts included Controller of Customs at the Port of London, Knight of the Shire for Kent, and King's Forester. He went on numerous adventurous diplomatic missions to France and Italy.

He details the issues that his current economic system and the unequal distribution of wealth present in achieving said ideals. He puts forth his beliefs on what the purposes of an economic system should be, including production and security. He criticizes monopolies and all the damage that they have done.

Najwa Zebian: The Collected Poems is an audio collection of Zebian's bestselling poetry, including the full text of Mind Platter, The Nectar of Pain, and Sparks of Phoenix. This bundled audiobook allows listeners to access all of Zebian’s moving work in one place, in the author’s own voice.

One of the great masterpieces of Western literature, The Odyssey chronicles the many trials and adventures Odysseus must pass through on his long journey home from the Trojan wars. Though the stormy god of the ocean is determined to keep him off course, Odysseus is clever and has the brilliant goddess Athena on his side.

In collaboration with the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), Audible is illustrating the power of the spoken word with Power in Poetry: Moods That Move. Five spoken word artists created unique pieces of poetry connected by the mood themes of the 2021 FOLD and rooted in the oral traditions of African, Indigenous, and other communities. Their poems serve as an anthem to not just the festival but to the power of diverse voices.

New Hampshire features Frost's meditations on rural life, love, and death, delivered in the voice of a soft-spoken New Englander. Critics have long marveled at the poet's gift for capturing the speech of the region's natives and his realistic evocations of the area's landscapes. This compilation, first published in 1923, earned Frost the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes and includes several of his best-known poems: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Nothing Gold Can Stay", and "Fire and Ice".

From a cemetery in a mythical small town in Illinois, the dead speak about their lives. Each free-verse monologue stands as an epitaph for the person speaking, yet the play is ultimately about life, not death. Featuring 50 performers with specially commissioned original music, this is the only audio version of this landmark classic available.

You’re Not a Girl in a Movie is a new collection of powerful poems by Hala Alyan, winner of the Arab American Book Award in Poetry and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In these nine extraordinary poems, Alyan wrestles with the intimate themes that have driven her acclaimed body of work to date: the aching loss of homeland, the image and worth of women, and the violence of love. In Beirut, Brooklyn, and roads in the American West, she unravels the effects of decades of war and displacement on love and human worth and identity.

Go 'Grrrr' with the Gruffalo, sing along with the Smartest Giant, help Monkey search for his mum and see if the little old lady can make some room in her house! The Gruffalo and Other Stories is brilliantly performed by well-known actors Imelda Staunton, Jim Carter and Steven Pacey, as well as by the author herself, Julia Donaldson. Each story also has a song and sound effects.