Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2023 - Poetry After 2003 - More than 100 pages
- Mahogany S.
- Friday, January 06, 2023
Collection
Check out one of these titles and fulfill the #BroaderBookshelf 2023 Reading Challenge prompt "read a collection of poetry published since 2003".
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2023 Reading Challenge. Find more lists here.
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear
Poems from Gaza
Published in 2022
"In this poetry debut, the first collection from any Gazan poet to be published in English, Mosab Abu Toha writes directly from the experience of growing up and living one's entire life in Gaza, the world's largest open-air prison camp. These poems emerge from Mosab's life under siege, first as a child, and then as a young father. A survivor of four brutal military attacks, he bears witness to a grinding cycle of destruction and assault, and yet, his poetry is infused with a profoundly universal humanity. In direct, vivid language, Abu Toha writes about being unwelcome in your own land, and even outside of it. He writes about being wounded by shrapnel at the age of 16, and then, a few years later, watching his home and his university get hit by Israeli warplanes in an attack that killed two of his close friends. Books are buried in rubble and electricity is often limited to 2 hours a day, and yet, families continue traditions, students attend university, and libraries rise from the ruins. These poems are filled with bombs and the ever-present menace of surveillance drones, as well as the smell of tea and roses in bloom, and the view of the sea at sunset. They present an almost surrealist/absurd viewpoint, based in a sense of rational and profound perplexity as to why these conditions continue, and how the people of Gaza go about their lives, even creating beauty as they find new ways to survive. Abu Toha writes, "It's not only about narrating things. It's about keeping things alive in us and for the generations to come. It's about how life crumbles, but also how it tries to stand." If we don't begin understanding what has happened there--and is still happening--Gaza might be our future as well. We all need to grasp what it means to still be human in such a situation"-- Provided by publisher.
After Rubén
Poems + Prose
Published in 2020
"After Rubén unfolds as a decades-long journey in poems and prose, braiding the personal, the political & the historical, interspersing along the way English-language versions & riffs of a Spanish-language master: Rubén Darío. Whether it's biting portraits of public figures, or nuanced sketches of his father, Francisco Aragón has assembled his most expansive collection to date, evoking his native San Francisco, but also imagining ancestral spaces in Nicaragua. Readers will encounter pieces that splice lines from literary forebearers, a moving elegy to a sibling, a surprising epistle from the grave. In short: a book that is both trajectory & mosaic, complicating the conversation surrounding poetry in the Americas-above all as it relates to Latinx & LGBTQ poetics"-- Provided by publisher.
If They Come for Us
Poems
Published in 2018
"This imaginative, soulful debut poetry collection captures the experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in contemporary America. Orphaned as a child, Fatimah Asghar grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. These poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while also exploring the man facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests itself in our relationships. In experimental forms and language both lyrical and raw, Asghar seamlessly braids together marginalized people's histories with her own understanding of identity, place, and belonging."-- From publisher's description.
The Tradition
Published in 2022
"Jericho Brown's daring new 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. Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown's mastery, and his invention of the duplex--a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues--testament to his formal skill. The Tradition is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while reveling in a celebration of contradiction"--Goodreads.com.
Woman Without Shame
Poems
Published in 2022
"...Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart."--Dust jacket flap.
Musical Tables
Poems
Published in 2022
""America's favorite poet" (the Wall Street Journal) has found a new form for his unique poetic style: the small poem. Here Collins writes about his trademark themes of nature, animals, poetry, mortality, absurdity, and love--all in a handful of lines. Neither Haiku nor limmerick, and certainly not a gimmick, the small poem pushes to an extreme poetry's famed power to condense emotional and conceptual content into small spaces. Taken together the more than 125 new poems of Musical Chairs show one of our greatest poets channeling his unique voice into a new phase of his luminous career"-- Provided by publisher.
Love and Other Poems
Published in 2021
"A collection of poems by Alex Dimitrov"-- Provided by publisher.
The Cloud Corporation
Published in 2010
"Donnelly's formally rigorous and ambitious, not to mention highly anticipated, second book follows up on the many projects of his debut, Twenty-Seven Props for a Production of Ein Liebenzeit, and extends his powers in poems that encompass a wider emotional range. Still here are the gorgeous linguistic surfaces, but also glimpses of a new intimacy: "when I fell you fell beside me and the concrete refused to apologize." Throughout is a kind of dark wordplay--"Demonstrate to yourself a resistance to feeling/ unqualified despair by attempting something like/ perfect despair embellished with hand gestures"--That pokes fun at language while remembering how dangerous words truly are. Procedural poems, such as one that repurposes language from the Patriot Act ("New obstacles shall be established by the Chairman of Failure./ Authorized language drones shall implement and expand/ written combat") portray the dark underbelly of official rhetoric. A pair of beautiful and frustrated long poems introduce a mind agoraphobicly trapped in its vast vocabulary: "the adverb here refers to my person/ and all its outskirts." These poems are a strange and powerful force to be reckoned with."--Publisher's description.
Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry
Poems & Artifacts
Published in 2020
"National Book Award winner Nikky Finney's fifth collection of light house poems, prosaic hot beds, and personal artifacts, copper coins a new world matrix for American poetry, one that articulates the witness chair and punctuates the occasion of the lyric into a new language of "docu-poetry.""-- Provided by publisher.
Life of the Party
Poems
Published in 2019
"A dazzling debut collection of raw and explosive poems about growing up in a sexist, sensationalized world, from a "ferocious" (BBC), "beautifully vulnerable" (Nylon) new talent. i'm a good girl, bad girl, sad girl, dream girl girl next door sunbathingin the driveway i wanna be them all at once, i wanna be all the girls i've ever loved Lauded for the power of her writing and having attracted an online fan base of millions for her extraordinary spoken-word performances, Olivia Gatwood is a thrilling new voice in contemporary feminist poetry. In Life of the Party, she weaves together her own coming of age with an investigation into our culture's romanticization of violence against women. In precise, searing language--at times blistering and riotous, attimes soulful and exuberant--she explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. How does one grow from a girl to a woman in a world wracked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim? What is the meaning of bravery? Visceral and haunting, this multifaceted collection illustrates that what happens to our bodies makes us who we are"-- Provided by publisher.
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
Published in 2015
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away-- loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it -- that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard.
Make Me Rain
Poems & Prose
Published in 2020
The seven-time NAACP Image Award-winning poet unapologetically celebrates her heritage in a deeply personal collection of verse that speaks to the injustices of society and the depths of her own heart.
Song for Almeyda ; And, Song for Anninho
Published in 2022
"Two epic poems, the love songs of fugitive slaves, set in 17th-century Brazil"-- Provided by publisher.
The Chameleon Couch
Poems
Published in 2011
A collection of poems by Yusef Komunyakaa that explores the complexities of culture and its relation to artifact and place.
Eighteen Years
Published in 2015
"Eighteen Years is here to tell you that you are not alone. It is meant to be curled up with at night, accompanied by a cup of tea. It's a hug in book-form. It is there to comfort you when fuzzy socks and ice cream just aren't enough. It will inspire you to pick up a pen and write down thoughts of your own. It will help you to say the words that feel stuck in your chest."--Goodreads.
Altar for Broken Things
Poems
Published in 2020
"These poems explore interlocking themes of sacrifice-willing and forced-and the sacred dimension of nature and the need for spiritual healing in a world suffering from the aftereffects of slavery and genocide, as well as homophobia and environmental damage. Many of the poems describe subjects in the Virginia Appalachian region as well as the author's indigenous Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen California coastal homeland"-- Provided by publisher.
Giant Moth Perishes
Published in 2021
"A new collection of poetry by Geoffrey Nutter"-- Provided by publisher.
Constellation Route
Published in 2022
"Constellation Route uses the form of the letter to explore issues related to contemporary American society: the environment, race, love, grief, friendship, violence, and spirituality. The book is largely a metaphysical tribute to both the Post Office and the act of letter writing as a way to understand and create meaningful connections with the world at large. A collection of mostly epistolary poems and odd poems about post offices"-- Provided by publisher.
Pillow Thoughts
Published in 2017
Pillow Thoughts is a collection of poetry and prose about heartbreak, love, and raw emotions. it is divided into sections to read when you feel you need them most. make a cup of tea and let yourself feel.
Path of Totality
Poems
Published in 2022
"This collection is about the sudden eviscerating loss of a child, the hope that precedes this crisis, and the suffering that follows. Spare, plain, sometimes startling in their snatches of humor, Pollari's poems careen into the "tilted reality" of grief. This is poetry dredged from shock and rage, then dissected with pointillistic precision. A shattering experience rendered with candor and immediacy, Path of Totality is a book "for anyone who ever expected anything.""-- Provided by publisher.
Useless Landscape, Or, A Guide for Boys
Published in 2012
In D. A. Powell?s fifth book of poetry, the rollicking line he has made his signature becomes the taut, more discursive means to describing beauty, singing a dirge, directing an ironic smile, or questioning who in any given setting is the instructor and who is the pupil. This is a book that explores the darker side of divisions and developments, which shows how the interstitial spaces of boonies, backstage, bathhouse, or bar are locations of desire. With Powell?s witty banter, emotional resolve, and powerful lyricism, this collection demonstrates his exhilarating range. --Publisher.
Our Andromeda
Published in 2012
Collects the author's poems about a parallel existence in the Andromeda galaxy in which people can relive their lives, correcting mistakes and avoiding pain.
What is Otherwise Infinite
Poems
Published in 2022
"Written in four sections with incisive and vivid lyrical language, Bianca Stone's What is Otherwise Infinite considers how we find our place in the world through themes of philosophy, religion, environment, myth, and psychology. "I deal only in the hardest pain-revivers, symbols / and tongues," writes Stone. "I want to tell you only / in the intimacy of our discomfort." Populated by archangels, limping in paradise; by allergies of the soul; the revelation and danger of motherhood; psychic wounds; and dirty, dirty chocolate layer cake, What is Otherwise Infinite deftly examines our inherent and inherited ideas of how to live, and the experience of the self-which on one hand is intensely personal, and on the other, universal"-- Provided by publisher.
Heed the Hollow
Poems
Published in 2019
"With beguiling shade and a sensuous portrait of bottom epistemology, Malcolm Tariq's 'Heed the Hollow' delivers upon us bittersweet experiences of black queer life in the South. Each poem builds upon the next, inscribing on the mind's eye the interiority of lives at once familiar and strange, their lyricism leaping from the poet's pen to the page to prick the ear of the reader's sinless soul. I cannot unhear these poems. Their whispers shout in the hollow, speaking in un/holy ghost tongues. Malcolm Tariq is the new / black / southern / queer / poet pastor come to town to save us all. I surrender all to 'Heed the Hollow'--E. Patrick Johnson, back cover
Taking the Arrow out of the Heart
Poems
Published in 2018
"Alice Walker, author of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple--"an American novel of permanent importance" (San Francisco Chronicle)--crafts a bilingual collection that is both playfully imaginative and intensely moving. Presented in both English and Spanish, Alice Walker shares a timely collection of nearly seventy works of passionate and powerful poetry that bears witness to our troubled times, while also chronicling a life well-lived. From poems of painful self-inquiry, to celebrating the simple beauty of baking frittatas, Walker offers us a window into her magical, at times difficult, and liberating world of activism, love, hope and, above all, gratitude. Whether she's urging us to preserve an urban paradise or behold the delicate necessity of beauty to the spirit, Walker encourages us to honor the divine that lives inside all of us and brings her legendary free verse to the page once again, demonstrating that she remains a revolutionary poet and an inspiration to generations of fans"-- Provided by publisher.
The Poet, the Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, a Wedding in St. Roch, the Big Box Store, the Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All
Published in 2015
"A companion to her astonishing collection of prose Cooling Time, C.D. Wright argues for poetry as a way of being and seeing"-- Provided by publisher.