English Poetry

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.

Kai Cheng Thom grew up a Chinese Canadian transgender girl in a hostile world. As an activist, counselor, conflict mediator, and spiritual healer, she's always pursued the same deeply personal mission: to embrace the revolutionary belief that every human being, no matter how hateful or horrible, is intrinsically sacred. But then Kai Cheng found herself in a crisis of faith, overwhelmed by the violence with which people treated one another, and barely clinging to the values and dreams she'd built her life around: justice, hope, love, and healing.

In poyums, Len Pennie has created a collection that is as approachable as it is affecting; whether she's writing letters to her younger self, advocating for women's rights or adapting fairy tales to process an abusive relationship, Len's voice is bold, unashamedly frank and unmistakeably hers. She consciously fuses Scots into her poetry, cleverly ensuring that it is accessible to speakers of both languages.

In the tumult of our contemporary moment, poetry has emerged as an inviting, consoling outlet with a unique power to move and connect us, to inspire fury, tears, joy, laughter, and surprise. This generous anthology pairs fifty illuminating poems with poet and podcast host Pádraig Ó Tuama's appealing, unhurried reflections. With keen insight and warm personal anecdotes, Ó Tuama considers each poem's artistry and explores how its meaning can reach into our own lives.

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.

Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters. “It is true poetry she is writing,” M. F.K . Fisher has observed, “not just rhythm, the beat, rhymes. I find it very moving and at times beautiful. It has an innate purity about it, unquenchable dignity.... It is astounding, flabbergasting, to recognize it, in all the words I read every day and night...it gives me heart, to hear so clearly the caged bird singing and to understand her notes.”

Tracing the legacy of Margaret Atwood—a writer who has fundamentally shaped the contemporary literary landscapes—Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems, 1961-2023 assembles Atwood’s most vital poems in one essential volume. In pieces that are at once brilliant, beautiful, and hyper-imagined, Atwood gives voice to remarkably drawn characters—mythological figures, animals, and everyday people—all of whom have something to say about what it means to live in a world as strange as our own.

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.

Jericho Brown's daring book The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Brown makes mythical pastorals to question the terrors to which we've become accustomed, and to celebrate how we survive.

This new audiobook features a collection of Service's very best and most beloved verses from his time living in and writing about the Klondike.

Following the success of At Blackwater Pond, this second CD from best-selling poet Mary Oliver contains a selection of 37 previously published poems and four as yet uncollected, read by the poet in her steady, magnetic voice. Oliver recites from the full range of her poetry - from her classic nature writing, to her verses for her mischievous bichon Percy, to her ever-deepening spiritual poems. Many Miles will be a most welcome addition to the collections of her fans.

Ted Hughes married Sylvia Plath in 1956, at the outset of their brilliant careers. Plath's suicide six-and-a-half years later, for which many held Hughes accountable, changed his life, his closest relationships, his standing in the literary world, and brought new significance to his poetry.

This powerful new collection of wisdom will help us find hope, peace, self-acceptance, and inspiration on the days we feel worn down, helpless, or sad. Written with love and understanding, it reminds us that, amidst our daily struggles and constant outpourings of bad news, we have so much to hope for and that every one of us can play a part, big or small, in making the world a better place. Donna Ashworth helps us remember that most people in this world are good and that acts of kindness and love within our individual spheres of influence, however small, all contribute to a better future.

In God Speaks Through Wombs, Drew Jackson explores the first eight chapters of Luke's Gospel in a new poetic register. These are declarative poems, faithfully proclaiming the gospel story in all its liberative power.

The Kalevala provides a compelling insight into the myths and folklore of Finland. Compiled by Elias Lönnrot in the 19th century, this impressive volume follows a tradition of oral storytelling that goes back some 2000 years, and it is often compared to such epic poems as Homer's Odyssey. However, The Kalevala has little in common with the culture of its Nordic neighbors: It is primarily poetic, it is mythical rather than historic, and its heroes solve their problems with magic more often than violence.

This collection of Japanese poetry was compiled and translated into English from an anthology known as The Collection of Myriad Leaves, and from a number of other anthologies made by imperial decree between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. This period has come to be considered the golden age of Japanese literature. These examples of Japanese poetry exhibit the most exquisite polish, allied with an avoidance of every shocking or perturbing theme; they combine the enduring luster of a precious metal with the tenuity of gold-leaf.

When Linda Ellis wrote her poem, "The Dash", in one afternoon twelve years ago, it would change her life forever. In 239 words, she captured the "Simple Truths" of why we were put on this earth. Since then, The Dash has been published hundreds of times in books, newspapers, magazines and company newsletters. It has also been read countless times at company meetings, graduations and funerals.

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.

Each pair of poems inspires a shift from the old way of thinking to the new: from guilt to gratitude, resistance to surrender, and fear to love. The first poem in each pair is dedicated to the old way. The second poem offers a shift in perspective that lovingly illuminates the new. Each seemingly simple poem instantly elicits a profound reset, and is coupled with beautiful line drawings that awaken not just the mind, but also the heart. The Shift’s unique poem pairings uplift the soul by offering a hopeful salve for our collective burnout.