Poetry Potpourri
April 2014
“April is the cruelest month...” wrote T. S. Eliot as he started The Waste Land (1922), but for poetry April is the busiest month, since in the United States April is National Poetry Month. This is an appropriate time to pick up or download a book of poetry and read and /or recite some of your old favorites or new finds.
Aimless Love: new and selected poems by Billy Collins
Aimless Love: new and selected poems by Billy Collins
The Best of the Best American Poetry selected by Robert Pinsky
Robert Pinsky , another former U. S. Poet Laureate, selected 100 poems from every past volume in The Best American Poetry series, so there are poems for everyone’s taste here. This gives one a great overview of the state of contemporary poetry in the United States.
The Book of Forms: a handbook of poetics, including odd and invented forms revised and expanded edition (c2012) by Lewis Putnam Turco
Long the go-to book for accomplished and beginning poets, who wish to explore the happy restraints and creative structures of formal and metrical poetry. Turco’s The Book of Forms now appears in its newest edition with more unusual contemporary examples of creativity included. This work appeals not only to poets, but also to teachers, scholars, and critics.
Collected Poems by Ron Padgett
This collected works edition of Ron Padgett’s fifty-year-long career in poetry brings needed attention to a life and oeuvre that passes in and out of favor, but never flags in its importance or excellence. Gathered together are the surprising pieces that made Padgett (b. 1942) famous and that brought him into contact with a wide array of friends and associates while connecting them to his life in reading and writing.
The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia
Mentored by San Francisco poet Kenneth Rexroth and championed while still a teenager by no less than André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, Philip Lamantia (1927 – 2005) is often included in anthologies of Beat Generation writers, because he also traveled in those wild, romantic circles. Working in a Romantic vein in its 20th century American manifestation, Lamantia created exquisite works that are here brought together in one volume.
Denise Levertov: collected poems edited by Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey
Born in England, but residing in the U. S. since 1948, Denise Levertov (1923 – 1997) wrote poetry in the traditions of modernism, especially influenced by William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound, but in a style that forged new territory. Her work often explored Jewish and Christian themes as well as being informed by Transcendental mysticism and later political and social concerns. This sizeable volume contains every poem Levertov ever published over the course of six decades in chronological order.
Poetry of the First World War: an anthology edited by Tim Kendall
Chock full of old favorites by those who served in the Great War like Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, and Robert Graves, this volume also includes less well-known civilian men and women who recorded their responses to this monumental conflict, now in its 100th anniversary. Music-Hall and Trench Songs and end notes round out this compact collection.
Poetry of Witness: the tradition in English, 1500/2001 edited by Carolyn Forche and Duncan Wu
This large trade paperback packs in five hundred years of poetry in English that contains descriptions or reflections on human suffering, casting familiar passages in classic and contemporary works from the point of view of or in the context of political and social strife and war.
Especially for Teens
The Crossover: a basketball novel in verse by Kwame Alexander
Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health.
The Fall of Arthur by J.R.R. Tolkien ; edited by Christopher Tolkien
This book-length poem, a posthumous publication of famed author J.R.R. Tolkien, features episodes from the legendary tales of King Arthur as epic poetry for young adults.
Formerly Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham
Jane, who survived a shark attack that cost her an arm, and who is an aspiring artist, reevaluates her ambitions and sense of identity while harboring a crush on her attractive tutor and considers a relationship with a boy from her science class. (Sequel to Shark Girl told in narrative verse)
How I Discovered Poetry by Marilyn Nelson
The fifty poems in this book by Marilyn Nelson, the Newbery Honor winner and National Book Award finalist, tell the story of her development as an artist and young woman during the Civil Rights struggle and Cold War of the 1950s.
The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba’s greatest abolitionist by Margarita Engle
In free verse, the author evokes the voice of Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, a book-loving writer, feminist, and abolitionist who courageously fought injustice in nineteenth-century Cuba.
October Mourning: a song for Matthew Shepard by Lesléa Newman
In this novel in verse by Lesléa Newman, author of the famed book Heather Has Two Mommies, is her sensitive poetic account of that night of October 6, 1998, when a gay twenty-one-year-old college student named Matthew Shepard was lured from a Wyoming bar by two young men, savagely beaten, tied to a remote fence, and left to die. Newman approaches the subject from various voices and points of view.
Poetry Speaks: Who I Am edited by Elise Paschen
Noted poets of the past and present contribute to this compendium of 100 poems that express every emotion or situation which young adults will recognize as their own. Familiar poems reveal familiar feelings in a fresh way.(Book includes CD)
Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25 edited by Naomi Shihab Nye
A celebrated poet brings together the poetry of 25 poets under the age of 25. Ranging in style and subject these young voices speak the thoughts, hopes and concerns of their generation.
Especially for Children
Little Poems for Tiny Ears by Lin Oliver, Illustrated by Tomie dePaola
Oliver’s poems and dePaola’s illustrations work well together to engage our youngest ones in the pleasures of poetry.Containing many moments of discovery and fun in verse, this is the perfect first book to introduce poetry to children.
Firefly July: a year of very short poems selected by Paul B. Janeczko, illustrated by Melissa Sweet
This book of poems and images showing the wonder of the world, engaging young and old alike, is another delightful collaboration between Janeczko and Sweet.
Hi, Koo! a year of seasons by Jon J. Muth
Author and artist John J. Muth takes panda bear Koo and our young ones through the four seasons with delightful haiku and delicate illustrations.
Outside the Box by Karma Wilson, illustrated by Diane Goode
This laugh-out-loud poetry collaboration from a New York Times bestselling author and a Caldecott Honor illustrator is anything but ordinary. Dive in to Karma Wilson's latest collection of more than 100 poems-some humorous, some poignant, and all of them ‘outside the box’.
List created by:
John J. Trause
Director, Oradell Public Library
Robin Rockman
Youth Services Librarian, Oradell Public Library
