English Poetry Literature

It's easy to feel at home in Mitford. In these high, green hills, the air is pure, the village is charming, and the people are generally lovable. Yet Father Tim, the bachelor rector, wants something more. Enter a dog the size of a sofa who moves in and won't go away. Add an attractive neighbor who begins wearing a path through the hedge. Now, stir in a lovable but unloved boy, a mystifying jewel theft, and a secret that's 60 years old.

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers - especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, whom her family can never know about.

Titled Smokes and Whiskey, the book is a collection of 42 poems on relationships, the ups and downs that come along with it, falling apart like rubble, but then finding oneself, gathering that strength back and building yourself up, back from that same rubble. I hope that this book makes everyone feel what I felt while writing it, and that love is a universal thing, and my story is not unique. And I hope that this makes them see that there is a beyond and that they can come out happy and clean.

Everyone has something, someone, somewhere else that they’d rather be. For four high-school seniors, their goals of perfection are just as different as the paths they take to get there. Cara’s parents’ unrealistic expectations have already sent her twin brother spiraling toward suicide. For her, “perfect” means rejecting their ideals to take a chance on a new kind of love. Kendra covets the perfect face and body - no matter what surgeries and drugs she needs to get there. Sean will sacrifice more than he can ever win back....

In 1945, the great American poet Ezra Pound was deemed insane. He was due to stand trial for treason for his fascist broadcasts in Italy during the war. Instead, he escaped a possible death sentence and was held at St. Elizabeths Hospital for the insane for more than a decade. While there, his visitors included the stars of modern poetry: T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Charles Olson, and William Carlos Williams, among others. They would sit with Pound on the hospital grounds and discuss everything from literary gossip to past escapades.

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality - the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood - and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces", Smith writes, "some of us all at once."

A collection of the greatest poetry from the Romantic period, the battlefield and the Victorian era, read by some of the 20th century’s most renowned actors. Themes of war, love, nature, sexuality and much more are played out in these timeless readings of poetry from the 19th and 20th century.

A wonderful selection of Yeats' finest work, read by the author himself along with Siobhan McKenna and others.

Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, she meets a boy who introduces her to crank. At first she finds it freeing, but soon Kristina's personality disappears inside the drug. What began as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul, and her life.

Listeners learn the steps of planting seeds and caring for them as they grow in a story told in verse.

Best-selling author Laurie Halse Anderson is known for the unflinching way she writes about and advocates for survivors of sexual assault. Now, inspired by her fans and enraged by how little in our culture has changed since her groundbreaking novel Speak was first published 20 years ago, she has written a poetry memoir that is as vulnerable as it is rallying, as timely as it is timeless.

The poems of the Poetic Edda have waited a long time for a modern English translation that would do them justice. Here it is at last (Odin be praised!) and well worth the wait. These amazing texts from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript are of huge historical, mythological, and literary importance, containing the lion's share of information that survives today about the gods and heroes of pre-Christian Scandinavians, their unique vision of the beginning and end of the world, etc.

A cannon. A strap. Or, you can call it a gun. That's what 15-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That's where Will's now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother's gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he's after. Or does he?

Blythe Baird’s If My Body Could Speak is a celebration of girlhood and all of its struggles and triumphs. In poems that dig deep into sexuality, acceptance of the body, survival of trauma, and learning to love yourself in spite of everything telling you not to, Baird’s voice is a rich addition to her generation. Searing, soaring, and heartbreaking, If My Body Could Speak balances the softness of femininity with the sharpness that girls are forced to become.

Join author Kyle Walker as he explores the Garden of Eden, writing of its rich history and future renewal in his latest collection of poems.

The Prophet by Khalil Gibran is a timeless masterpiece of poetic prose that explores universal themes of love, life, and the human experience. Written in a deeply lyrical and spiritual tone, the book follows Almustafa, a wise prophet, as he prepares to leave the city of Orphalese after twelve years. Before his departure, the townspeople gather to seek his counsel, prompting him to share profound reflections on 26 essential aspects of life, including love, marriage, work, freedom, joy, and sorrow.

Primarily triolets, a rather mechanical form but one which allows for a human touch, the poems in "Songs for a Mechanical Age" were written specifically to celebrate the world of Steampunk. Here you will find visions of history, alternate history, fantasy and science fiction.

A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood. A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good. Walk further into the deep dark wood, and discover what happens when a quick-witted mouse comes face to face with an owl, a snake...and a hungry Gruffalo!

Before Josh and Jordan Bell were streaking up and down the court, their father was learning his own moves. In this prequel to Newbery Medal winner The Crossover, Chuck Bell takes center stage, as listeners get a glimpse of his childhood and how he became the jazz music worshiping basketball star his sons look up to. A novel in verse with all the impact and rhythm listeners have come to expect from Kwame Alexander, Rebound will go back in time to visit the childhood of Chuck "Da Man" Bell during one pivotal summer when young Charlie is sent to stay with his grandparents, where he discovers basketball and learns more about his family's past.

In The Sleep of Apples, Ami Sands Brodoff writes with passion and consummate skill about nine closely linked characters who walk the tightrope of survival. Set in a gritty Montreal neighbourhood that's been slowly gentrifying over the last two decades, troubled teenagers and an experienced psychiatrist, a truck driver permanently scarred by a near-fatal accident and a recreation therapist struggle to build a community and make their lives–and their deaths–meaningful.