Staff Picks
National Poetry Month
- Morgan R.
- Wednesday, April 01, 2020
Collection
April is National Poetry Month and while we are currently #AloneTogether, we can still enjoy some of the simple things in life, like a great poem to take us out of the now and into the artistic world of a poet's mind. Check out Cloud Library, Overdrive, and Hoopla for even more great poetry that you can download instantly.
Seeing Stars
Poems
Published in 2011
The christening -- An accommodation -- The cuckoo -- Back in the early days of the twenty-first century -- Michael -- I'll be there to love and comfort you -- The English astronaut -- Hop in, Dennis -- Upon opening the chest freezer -- Seeing stars -- Last words -- My difference -- The accident -- Aviators -- 15:30 by the elephant house -- An obituary -- Knowing what we know now -- The experience -- Collaborators -- Ricky Wilson couldn't sleep -- The knack -- The practical way to heaven -- To the bridge -- Beyond Huddersfield -- Cheeses of Nazareth -- Show and tell -- Upon unloading the dishwasher -- Poodles -- The personal touch -- The last panda -- Sold to the lady in the sunglasses and green shoes -- The war of the roses -- A nativity -- The delegates-- The overtones -- The sighting of the century -- The crunch -- Bringing it all back home -- Last day on planet Earth.
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.
An American Sunrise
Poems
Published in 2019
"In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family's lands and opens a dialogue with history ... Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. From her memory of her mother's death, to her beginnings in the Native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo's personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings. Her poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living in the ruins of injustice."--Jacket.
We Hope This Reaches You in Time
Published in 2020
Ideas, poetry, and prose from bestselling authors Samantha King Holmes & r.h. Sin.
Citizen Illegal
Poems
Published in 2018
"In this stunning debut, poet José Olivarez explores the story, contradictions, joys, and sorrows that embody life in the spaces between Mexico and America. He paints vivid portraits of good kids, bad kids, families clinging to hope, life after the steel mills, and gentrifying barrios. Drawing on the rich traditions of Latinx and Chicago writers like Sandra Cisneros and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olivarez creates a home out of life in the in-between."-- Provided by publisher.
For Everyone
Published in 2018
"Originally performed at the Kennedy Center for the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and later as a tribute to Walter Dean Myers, this stirring and inspirational poem is New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds's rallying cry to the dreamers of the world. Jump Anyway is for kids who dream. Kids who dream of being better than they are. Kids who dream of doing more than they almost dare to dream. Kids who are like Jason, a self-professed dreamer. In it, Jason does not claim to know how to make dreams come true; he has, in fact, been fighting on the front line of his own battle to make his own dreams a reality. He expected to make it when he was sixteen. He inched that number up to eighteen, then twenty-five years old.. Now, some of those expectations have been realized. But others, the most important ones, lay ahead, and a lot of them involve kids, how to inspire them. All the kids who are scared to dream, or don't know how to dream, or don't dare to dream because they've NEVER seen a dream come true. Jason wants kids to know that dreams take time. They involve countless struggles. But no matter how many times a dreamer gets beat down, the drive and the passion and the hope never fully extinguish--because just having the dream is the start you need, or you won't get anywhere anyway, and that is when you have to take a leap of faith and ... jump anyway"-- Provided by publisher.
Brown
Poems
Published in 2018
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. From "History"--A song of Kansas high-school fixture Mr. W., who gave his students "the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, or Watts, / barely a march on Washington"--to "Money Road," a sobering pilgrimage to the site of Emmett Till's lynching, the poems engage place and the past and their intertwined power. These twenty-eight taut poems and poetic sequences, including an oratorio based on Mississippi "barkeep, activist, waiter" Booker Wright that was performed at Carnegie Hall and the vibrant sonnet cycle "De La Soul Is Dead," about the days when hip-hop was growing up ("we were black then, not yet / African American"), remind us that blackness and brownness tell an ongoing story. A testament to Young's own--and our collective--experience, Brown offers beautiful, sustained harmonies from a poet whose wisdom deepens with time"-- Provided by publisher.