English Poetry Literature

Enjoy this amazing narration of Robert Frost's poetry, including his most famous poems, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Road Not Taken, among many others.

In 1855, Walt Whitman published, at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of 12 poems. Showing the influence of a uniquely American form of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, the writing is distinguished by an explosively innovative free-verse style and previously unmentionable subject matter. Exalting nature, celebrating the human body, and praising the senses and sexual love, this monumental work, now a classic of American poetry, was condemned as immoral upon publication.

How do we find steadiness within ourselves in the midst of dizzying personal and global change? At a time when many of us feel overwhelmed by fear and isolation, Cleo Wade’s Remember Love offers intimate, uplifting words that anchor, nurture, and make us feel less alone. She shares that the heart work we do for ourselves is not done to avoid the tough stuff—periods of lostness, self-doubt, depression, grief, heartbreak, and anxiety.

Rumi's Spiritual Verses is the greatest mystical poem in Islamic culture - and of all time. Rumi examines our human separation from reality, love, and truth. He shows how love - neither erotic nor sentimental but divine, by which the universe is held together - enlightens ignorance and dissolves suffering. The first book of the Masnavi is the key to the whole work: It takes off from simple, amusing tales into realms unimaginable, but wholly familiar to the human heart.

“The poet is endemic with life itself,” Will Alexander once said, and in this searing pas de trois, Refractive Africa: Ballet of the Forgotten, he has exemplified this vital candescence with a transpersonal amplification worthy of the Cambrian explosion. “This being the ballet of the forgotten,” he writes as diasporic witness, “of refracted boundary points as venom.” The volume’s opening poem pays homage to the innovative Nigerian-Yoruban author Amos Tutuola; it ends with an encomium to the modernist Malagasy poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo.

Five works in one collection. This audiobook of his treasured poetry collection walks you through a time when the American Experiment came to a new maturity; when the Transcendentalist Movement forever changed life and poetry.

Richard Burton reads from Hardy and Donne, and performs a wonderful unabridged version of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (along with Robert Hardy and John Neville).

This is the story of a dark night of the soul, of traversing the depths of despair, and of rebirth. It shows the reality of hitting rock bottom. Not by a self-reported narrative written after the fact, but through unfiltered poetic expression written in real time during breakdown and recovery. The poems within this collection were written over a 24-month period and are presented in chronological order. They show the inner tumult and turmoil of a man desperately trying, and failing, to hold together the crumbling status quo of his prior existence.

A nameless, ageless, genderless protagonist wishes nothing more than to be someone- anyone- else. And they can. Sort of. They can "ride backseat" in other people's lives. They see what they see, hear what they hear, think what they think, and feel what they feel, but they have no control. I Am You follows our protagonist as they follow the lives of three individuals.

Poetry Rx presents 50 great poems as seen through the eyes of a renowned psychiatrist and New York Times best seller. In this book, you will find insights into love, sorrow, ecstasy, and everything in between: love in the moment or for a lifetime; love that is fulfilling or addictive; when to break up and how to survive when someone breaks up with you.

Radiant and tender, My Baby First Birthday is a collection that examines innocence, asking us who gets to be loved and who has to deplete themselves just to survive. It's about existence and nonexistence, about being born - without consent. Jenny Zhang writes about accepting pain, about the way we fetishize womanhood and motherhood, and reduce women to their violations, traumas, and body parts.

Under Sonoran Skies: Prose and Poetry from the High Desert is an anthology of fiction and nonfiction that includes poems and short stories, as well as general, historical, and reflective essays. Drawing on diverse life experiences, spanning education, engineering, ministry, law, and the performing arts, the six authors bring a complementary tone, style, and rhythm to both fiction and nonfiction in this 240-page book.

Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility—“What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?”—and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: “Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something brutal.” And still Limón shows us, as ever, the persistence of hunger, love, and joy, the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives.

After receiving the news that in vitro would be her only hope for biological children, award-winning poet Emily Adams had to learn to live in a new world of needles, embarrassing tests, long waiting periods, and expensive doctor appointments.

This anthology provides some of the finest Christian verse written during the second millennium of Christianity. All of the great ones are here: Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Dante and Chaucer from the High Middle Ages; Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and John Donne from the Reformation; English and American Romantics such as Browning and Whittier.

With searing intelligence and great sensitivity, the poems of Kelly Caldwell—many addressed to Cass Donish, her partner in the years before her suicide at thirty-one, swim through a complex matrix of transformations: mental illness, divorce, gender transition, and self-discovery. But they wrestle, too, with the poet’s painful relationships with her family of Christian missionaries, who refused to affirm her identity.

Love That Dog shows how one boy named Jack finds his voice with the help of a teacher, a pencil, some yellow paper, and, of course, a dog. Written as a series of free-verse poems from Jack's point of view, and with classic poetry included in the back matter, this novel is perfect for kids and teachers, too. Jack hates poetry. Only girls write it and every time he tries to, his brain feels empty. But his teacher, Miss Stretchberry, won't stop giving her class poetry assignments - and Jack can't avoid them.

Evgenii Onegin is best known in the West through Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin. But the original narrative poem (consisting of 389 stanzas, the form of which has become known as the "Pushkin sonnet") is one of the landmarks of Russian literature. In the poem, the eponymous hero repudiates love, only to later experience the pain of rejection himself. Pushkin’s unique style proves timeless in its exploration of love, life, passion, jealousy, and the consequences of social convention.

Nima wishes she were someone else. She doesn’t feel understood by her mother, who grew up in a different land. She doesn’t feel accepted in her suburban town; yet somehow, she isn't different enough to belong elsewhere. Her best friend, Haitham, is the only person with whom she can truly be herself. Until she can't, and suddenly her only refuge is gone.

Shiva the Fire of Transformation was written during my dad’s last few years on Earth.... This poetry book is all about going through transformational experiences, overcoming death, and understanding the process of life.