Family Poetry

The work of Carl Dennis has won praise for its “integrity, its substance, and its seemingly effortless craft; and for its embodiment of passionate inquiry” (Times Literary Supplement). The title of his new collection, Earthborn, helps to point the way to its two central concerns: how to find meaning, as creatures of the earth, in lives that are short and frail and destined to be forgotten; and how, as stewards of the earth, to address the need to protect our home from ourselves, from the menace to life posed by our own species.

The poems in Yanyi’s latest book suggest that we enter and exit our old selves like homes. We look through the windows and recognize some former aspect of our lives that is both ours and not ours. We long for what we had even as we recognize that we can no longer live there. Yanyi conjures the beloved both within and without us: the beloved we believe we know, the beloved who is never the person we imagine, and the beloved who threatens to erase us even as we stand before them.

woke up no light is a Black girl’s saunter turned to a woman’s defiant strut. These are the hymns of a new generation of poetry. Young, alive, yearning. A mouth swung open and ready to devour. A quest for home in a world that knows only wasteland and wanting.

In this story the child is invited on a journey into the galaxy where wonders never cease. This is a galaxy where love, acceptance, and unconditional support reign supreme. “THE FAMILY STAR” offers a standing invitation to the child. The child will learn that they are always in good company as Stars are personified in a unique and brilliant way. It is a fascinating opportunity to look upon a galaxy of stars in their seemingly infinite number and feel comforted by their resilience and tenacity.

From a visionary writer praised for her captivating work on Black history and experience, comes a poetry collection exploring personal, political, and artistic frontiers, journeying from her family's history as "Afropioneers" in the American West to shimmering glimpses of transcendent, liberated futures.

I am open; these words are my sutures. Shades is an attempt to reconcile who I am as a man, with a society that seems to be fluctuating and struggling at every turn. I show my encounters with family, religion, queerness, heartbreak, COVID-19, and politics. This is a look at my life in 2021, shown through poetry.

The debut poetry collection of Charles Kell, Cage of Lit Glass engages themes of death, incarceration, and family through a range of physical, emotional, and philosophical spaces. In startling images of beauty and violence, Kell creates a haunting world that mirrors our individual and cultural fears. Boldly engaging with the absurdity, strain, and horrors of life, Kell’s poems expand upon the lineage of writers such as Kafka, Beckett, and Rimbaud.

Frank, unsparing, often violent, and disturbing, these poems speak in the voice of a young man trying to navigate the city he loves as he lives in the long shadow of its decline with a sense of grace and hope. With the city of Baltimore as his backdrop, accomplished poet, author, and editor Dean Bartoli Smith offers a wrenching examination of our troubled attachments to place and the deepest wounds of the American psyche.

"ECHOES OF GREATNESS: Poems By Justice Ajani" invites listeners into a world where poetry becomes a bridge between generations, passions, and profound reflections. Inspired by a lineage steeped in activism, spirituality, and artistic expression, Justice Ajani's verses resonate with the echoes of his ancestors and the vibrancy of his own voice.

"How can I teach a prayer / I only know how to recite?" "America, whose death / didn't you come from?" These are some of the questions that poet Joshua Gottlieb-Miller wrestles with in his beautiful, gripping new collection. By turns experimental and documentary, Dybbuk Americana draws out the questions around Jewish identity in the United States, and what it means to pass on Jewish identity to one's child. This hybrid text draws on art, mysticism, and history, taking the dybbuk, a figure from Jewish folklore, as its central metaphor.

The Dry Valley encapsulates one woman’s relationship with herself, her alcoholic spouse, and the world, in three different Saskatchewan landscapes. The poems offer a fascinating interplay between mindful explorations of self and immersions in the challenging complexities of interpersonal relationships, social issues, and meaningful engagement with the environment.

In We Inherit What the Fires Left, award-winning poet William Evans embarks on a powerful new collection that explores the lived experience of race in the American suburbs and what dreams and injuries are passed from generation to generation. Fall under the spell of Evans' boldly intimate, wise, and emotionally candid voice in these urgent, electrifying poems. This eloquent collection explores not only what these inheritances are composed of, but what price the bearer must pay for such legacies, and the costly tolls exacted on both body and spirit.

James Brown. John Brown's raid. Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed. The prize-winning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "brown" in this powerful new collection. Divided into "Home Recordings" and "Field Recordings", Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black Kansas boyhood to comment on our times.

When Lonnie Collins Motion was seven years old, his life changed forever. Now Lonnie is eleven and his life is about to change again. His teacher, Ms. Marcus, is showing him ways to put his jumbled feelings on paper. And suddenly, Lonnie has a whole new way to tell the world about his life, his friends, his little sister, Lili, and even his foster mom, Miss Edna, who started out crabby but isn’t so bad after all. Award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson’s lyrical voice captures Lonnie’s thoughtful perspectives of the world and his determination to one day put a family together again.

If you have ever been presented with life's challenges, this book was written for you. These poetic tales reach into the heart and soul of all who encounter them and every uplifting tale related in this book is absolutely true. They speak of the human experience; they talk of overcoming sometimes extreme challenges and most of all to trust keep on keeping on until we get the desired result from life. Proves once and for all that project the right energy, follow our own inspirational feelings and we do all experience exactly what we need to grow as people.

A poetry collection about the beautiful and disorienting period of new motherhood, exploring an experience both otherworldly and very, very human.

My latest book is called Looking Back: A Poets Journey and is my sixth poetry book in just a year and a half. It has been a very tearful and emotional time as I wrote down the pages and started looking back at some of my fans favorites and some of the poetry that made the poet you see today. I hope that you enjoy listening to them as I have enjoyed writing them for you all. Words can never express the happiness that I have inside and I want to thank you all for such a wonderful journey so far.

Chronicled in four parts, shifting restlessly between the author's childhood memories, the sudden disappearance of his brother, and the inevitable loss of his ailing mother, Late to the Search Party explores what it means to be a family of one—to be orphaned, whether by fate or by circumstance. In language that is both grounded and ethereal, Dawson tallies the losses and looks at what remains: the frustration and anger, the bewilderment and sadness—and the affection and humor that makes itself felt in spite of everything.

Life, love, and work intertwine with nature and a unique series of poems, in Tom's revised edition of his successful book of poetry. No matter what the day-to-day challenges are, as life unfolds, Tom shows us - through his poetry - that life is about enjoying what we can in every single moment.

A father and daughter journey through poetry. This is a captivating collection of poetry and prose from a father and daughter that reflects their love for poetry and the experiences of their father-daughter relationship, life, and love.