Social Poetry

In Invisible Strings, poet, professor, and dedicated Swiftie Kristie Frederick Daugherty has brought together 113 contemporary poets, each contributing an original poem that responds to a specific Taylor Swift song.

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....

It’s the last few months of eighth grade, and Isaiah feels lost. He thought his summer was going to be him and his boys Drew and Darius, hanging out, doing wheelies, watching martial arts movies, and breaking tons of Guinness World Records before high school. But now, more and more, Drew seems to be fading from their friendship, and though he won’t admit it, Isaiah knows exactly why. Because Darius is…gone.

Jason and the Golden Fleece is one of the finest tales of Ancient Greece, an epic journey of adventure and trial standing beside similar stories of Perseus, Theseus and the Labours of Heracles. The finest classic account comes from Apollonius of Rhodes, the Greek poet of the 3rd century BCE and librarian at Alexandria. Though less well-known than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and much shorter, it is an epic poem which is both exciting and moving, with remarkably vivid portraits of the main characters, Jason and Medea.

Under the order of King Pelias, Jason embarks on a perilous journey to steal the Golden Fleece from the Land of Colchis. Far from heroic, Jason is the typical everyman. Often compared with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts is the only surviving poem from the Hellenistic period and was hugely influential on later literature, especially the Roman poetry of Virgil and Ovid.

Matthew Turner doesn't have faith in anything. Not in family - his is a shambles after his younger brother was bullied into suicide. Not in so-called friends who turn their backs when things get tough. Not in some all-powerful creator who lets too much bad stuff happen. And certainly not in some "It Gets Better" psychobabble. No matter what his girlfriend Hayden says about faith and forgiveness, there's no way Matt's letting go of blame.

The idea of sexual fluidity may seem new, but it is at least as old as the ancient Greeks, who wrote about queer experiences with remarkable frankness, wit, and insight. How to Be Queer is an infatuating collection of these writings about desire, love, and lust between men, between women, and between humans and gods, in lucid and lively new translations.

Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse is a satirical poetry collection from award-winning actor and best-selling author John Lithgow. Chronicling the last few raucous years in American politics, Lithgow takes listeners verse by verse through the history of Donald Trump's presidency.

A rich and varied collection of contemporary short stories, extracts from novels, and poetry that will go a long way toward informing the English-speaking world of the latest developments in Iranian literature. This sampling - or to use the Farsi term golchine, a bouquet - provides a window onto an important but sorely neglected segment of world culture. We hope it will also serve to awaken further interest in the work and in translations of Iranian novelists and poets.

Sixth grade is coming to an end, and so is life as Macy McMillan knows it. Soon, her mother will upend their perfect little family, adding a stepfather and six-year-old twin stepsisters. She sends Macy next door to help 86-year-old Iris Gillan, who is getting ready to move into an assisted-living facility. Iris can't pack a single box on her own, and, worse, she doesn't know sign language. Soon, through notes and books and cookies, a bond grows between them, and this friendship, odd and unexpected, may be just what Macy needs to face the changes in her life.

The gym is where Claire shines and she’s on her way to qualifying for the state championships. But at school, she’s known as a troublemaker—which is fine with her since it helps her hide her reading problem. Claire has never been able to make sense of the wobbling jumble of letters on a page. When a sympathetic principal wonders if she’s acting out because she may have dyslexia, she’s stunned. Claire has always assumed she’s dumb, so she’s eager to get evaluated. But her mother balks.

Six hours. One marathon swim. That’s all Tully Birch needs to get her life straightened out. With the help of her best friend, Arch, Tully braves the waters of Lake Tahoe to break the record for the youngest person ever to complete the famous “Godfather swim.” She wants to achieve something no one in the world has done, because if she does, maybe, just maybe, her mom will come back.

Transcendentalism embodies the concept that people have a deeper and more profound understanding of the world around them than simply by what they can glimpse with their senses. In this collection of essays and poems, the works of three transcendentalist authors are shared, each with their own impressions and opinions supporting the movement.

Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books—the weird one, the outsider—and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears?

Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance" and "The Over-Soul". Together with "Nature", these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.

Gleaned from Rainer Maria Rilke's voluminous, never-before-translated letters to bereaved friends and acquaintances, The Dark Interval is a profound vision of the mourning process and a meditation on death's place in our lives. Following the format of Letters to a Young Poet, this book arranges Rilke's letters into an uninterrupted sequence, showcasing the full range of the great author's thoughts on death and dying as well as his sensitive and moving expressions of consolation and condolence.

When Reena; her little brother, Luke; and their parents first move to Maine, Reena doesn't know what to expect. She's ready for beaches, blueberries, and all the lobster she can eat. Instead her parents "volunteer" Reena and Luke to work for an eccentric neighbor named Mrs. Falala, who has a pig named Paulie, a cat named China, a snake named Edna - and that stubborn cow, Zora.

Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour he demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is mortal, and the world and everything in it is governed by the mechanical laws of nature and not by gods; and that by believing this men can live in peace of mind and happiness. He bases this on the atomic theory expounded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, and continues with an examination of sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology.

For the most part, Hannah's life is just how she wants it. She has two supportive parents, she's popular at school, and she's been killing it at gymnastics. But when her cousin Cal moves in with her family, everything changes. Cal tells half-truths and tall tales, pranks Hannah constantly, and seems to be the reason her parents are fighting more and more. Nothing is how it used to be. She knows that Cal went through a lot after his mom died, and she is trying to be patient, but most days Hannah just wishes Cal never moved in.

Seventh grader Henrietta Weldon gets to switch schools—finally! She’ll be “mainstreaming” into public school, leaving her special education school behind. She can’t wait for her new schedule, new friends, and new classes. Henri’s dyscalculia, a learning disability that makes math challenging to process and understand, is what she expects to give her problems.