United States Poetry

Every day people tune in to The Writer's Almanac on public radio and hear Garrison Keillor read them a poem. And here, for the first time, is an anthology of poems from the show, chosen by the narrator for their wit, their frankness, their passion, their "utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with at 7 a.m." The title Good Poems comes from common literary parlance. For writers, it's enough to refer to somebody having written a good poem. Somebody else can worry about greatness. Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" is a good poem, and so is James Wright's "A Blessing." Regular people love those poems. People read them aloud at weddings, people send them by e-mail. Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds. It's a book of poems for anybody who loves poetry whether they know it or not.

A comprehensive anthology that focuses on poetry from the four largest Latino groups in the United States: Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans and Dominican Americans. Includes works from more than 80 Latino poets writing from the mid-twentieth century to the present, dealing with a variety of issues from those specific to the Hispanic experience to more universal concerns.

"In this lovely literary valentine, more than one hundred evocative, tender poems from some of the most inspired poets of our time celebrate love longed for and finally found; love requited and unrequited; love secret and blazoned across the sky; loves past, present, and yet to come."--BOOK JACKET.

Volume 1 of this comprehensive anthology features a generous selection of Native American materials, then spans the years from the establishment of the American colonies to about 1900, a world on the brink of World War I and the modern era.

"Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, gathers together a diverse range of 55 poets with varying aesthetics and backgrounds. In addition to generous samples of poetry by each trans writer, the book also includes "poetics statements"--reflections by each poet that provide context for their work covering a range of issues from identification and embodiment to language and activism." -- Publisher's description

"The United States of Poetry combines images from the breakthrough TV series on which it is based with over 80 poems to reveal this nation as never before. It is the first anthology to capture the passion, intelligence, and variety of the New Poetry that is sweeping the country. Three years in the making, including a 10-week, 13,000-mile road trip to film the poets on their own turf, this book is for everyone with a love for the power of the word."--BOOK JACKET. "The United States of Poetry will inspire and delight as it unveils a new nation, conceived in language, and dedicated to the proposition that you don't have to turn off your mind to have a good time. From renowned Nobel Laureates (Brodsky, Milosz, Walcott) to rock 'n' rollers (Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen), from the Beats (Ginsberg, Baraka, Ferlinghetti) to cowboy poets, rappers, and former President Jimmy Carter, this book is a feast of language and image, energy and meaning. Here, the disparate and unheard languages of our country - pidgin, Spanish, hip-hop, Creole, Tagalog, and American sign Language - speak out for themselves, weave together the accents and dialects of our nation."--BOOK JACKET.

Angelou, Maya, author.

Throughout her illustrious career in letters, Maya Angelou gifted, healed, and inspired the world with her words. Now the beauty and spirit of those words live on in this new and complete collection of poetry that reflects and honors the writer's remarkable life.

Brooks, Gwendolyn, 1917-2000.

Publisher description -- The classic volume by the distinguished modern poet, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, showcases an esteemed artist's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world.

Castillo, Ana.

Presents lyrical, streetwise, frequently autobiographical poems, some in English and others in Spanish, including a new, never before published work.

Cisneros, Sandra.

A selection of poetry dealing with the Mexican American psyche.

Cummings, E. E. (Edward Estlin), 1894-1962.

Cummings, E. E. (Edward Estlin), 1894-1962, author.

With a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn, this redesigned and fully reset edition of Complete Poems collects and presents all the poems published or designated for publication by E.E. Cummings in his lifetime.

Dickinson, Emily, 1830-1886.

The only one-volume edition containing all 1,775 of Emily Dickinson's poems. - back cover.

Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965.

This volume contains the works Eliot personally selected to be preserved.

Eliot, T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965, author.

"This critical edition of T. S. Eliot's poems establishes a new text of the Collected Poems, 1909-1962, rectifying accidental omissions and errors that have crept in during the century since Eliot's astonishing debut, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." As well as the masterpieces, The Poems of T. S. Eliot: Volume I contains the poems of his youth, which were rediscovered only decades later; others that circulated privately during his lifetime; and love poems from his final years, written for his wife, Valerie. Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue have provided a commentary that illuminates the imaginative life of each poem. Calling upon Eliot's critical writings as well as his drafts, letters, and other original materials, Ricks and McCue illustrate not only the breadth of Eliot's interests and the range of his writings but how it was that the author of "Gerontion" came to write "Triumphal March" and then Four Quartets. Thanks to the family and friends who recognized Eliot's genius and preserved his writings from an early age, the archival record is exceptionally complete, enabling us to follow in unique detail the progress of a mind that never ceased exploring."--Amazon.com

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882, author.

As an adolescent America searched for its unique identity among the nations of the world, a number of thinkers and writers emerged eager to share their vision of what the American character could be. Among their leaders was Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essays, lectures, and poems defined the American transcendentalist movement, though he himself disliked the term. Emerson advocates a rejection of fear-driven conformity, a total independence of thought and spirit, and a life lived in harmony with nature. He believes that Truth lies within each individual, for each is part of a greater whole, a universal "over-soul" through which we transcend the merely mortal. Emerson was extremely prolific throughout his life; his collected writings fill forty volumes. This edition contains his major works, including Nature, the essays "Self-Reliance," "The American Scholar," "The Over-Soul," "Circles," "The Poet," and "Experience,", and such important poems as "The Rhodora," "Uriel," "The Humble-Bee," "Earth-Song," "Give All to Love," and the well-loved "Concord Hymn."--publisher website.

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, author.

Frost, Robert, 1874-1963.

"A deluxe edition of Frost's early poems, selected by poet David Orr for the centennial of "The Road Not Taken" For one hundred years, Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" has enchanted and challenged readers with its deceptively simple premise--a person reaches a fork in the road, facing a choice full of doubt and possibility. The Road Not Taken and Other Poems presents Frost's best-loved poem along with other works from his brilliant early years, including such poems as "After Apple-Picking," "The Oven Bird," and "Mending Wall." Award-winning poet and critic David Orr's introduction discusses why Frost remains so central (if often misunderstood) in American culture and how the beautiful intricacy of his poetry keeps inviting generation after generation to search for meaning in his work. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators"-- Provided by publisher.

Ginsberg, Allen, 1926-1997.

"The prophetic poem that launched a generation when it was first published in 1956 is here presented in a commemorative 40th Anniversary Edition."--BOOK JACKET. "When the book arrived from its British printers, it was seized almost immediately by U.S. Customs, and shortly thereafter the San Francisco police arrested its publisher and editor, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, together with the City Lights Bookstore manager, Shigeyoshi Murao. The two of them were charged with disseminating obscene literature, and the case went to trial in the Municipal Court of Judge Clayton Horn. A parade of distinguished literary and academic witnesses persuaded the judge that the title poem was indeed not obscene and that it had "redeeming social significance.""--BOOK JACKET. "Thus was Howl and Other Poems freed to become the single most influential poetic work of the post World War II era, with over 800,000 copies now in print."--BOOK JACKET.

Glück, Louise, 1943-

The Wild Iris was written during a ten-week period in the summer of 1991. Louise Cluck's first four collections consistently returned to the natural world, to the classical and biblical narratives that arose to explain the phenomena of this world, to provide meaning and to console. Ararat, her fifth book, offered a substitution for the received: a demotic, particularized myth of contemporary family. Now in The Wild Iris, her most important and accomplished collection to date, ecstatic imagination supplants both empiricism and tradition, creating an impassioned polyphonic exchange among the god who "disclose?s?/virtually nothing," human beings who "leave/signs of feeling/everywhere," and a garden where "whatever/returns from oblivion returns/ to find a voice." The poems of this sequence see beyond mortality, the bitter discovery on which individuality depends. "To be one thing/is to be next to nothing," Cluck challenges the reader. "Is it enough/only to look inward?" A major poet redefines her task--its thematic obsessions, its stylistic signature--with each volume. Visionary, shrewd, intuitive--and at once cyclical and apocalyptic--The Wild Iris is not a repudiation but a confirmation, an audacious feat of psychic ventriloquism, a fiercely original record of the spirit's obsession with, and awe of, earth.

Hirshfield, Jane, 1953-

In an extraordinary new collection, the widely acclaimed poet deepens and extends her exploration of time, human engagement, and the sensuous world.

Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967.

Levine, Philip, 1928-2015

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1807-1882.

Merwin, W. S. (William Stanley), 1927-2019

Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 1892-1950.

Nye, Naomi Shihab.

A collection of poetry in which the author draws from ordinary people and events for subject matter.

Oliver, Mary, 1935-2019

"In A THOUSAND MORNINGS, Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has come to define her life's work, transporting us to the marshland and coastline of her beloved home, Provincetown, Massachusetts. In these pages, Oliver shares the wonder of dawn, the grace of animals, and the transformative power of attention. Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her adored dog, Percy, she is ever patient in her observations and open to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments"--Jacket.

Parker, Dorothy, 1893-1967.

Best remembered as a member of the Algonquin Round Table, the fabled Jazz Age literary coterie, Dorothy Parker built a reputation as one of the era's most beloved poets. Parker's satirical wit and sharp-edged humor earned her a reputation as the wittiest woman in America.

Piercy, Marge.

The author's seventh and most wide ranging collection, these poems move from the amusingly elegiac to the erotic, the classical to the funny.

Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849, author.

Presents the complete poetry of American poet Edgar Allan Poe, composed between 1827 and 1849, including the familiar selections "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven."

Rich, Adrienne, 1929-2012

Sanchez, Sonia, 1934-

Does Your House Have Lions? explores the life of Sonia Sanchez's brother - a vibrant young man who left the South for New York, immersed himself in the city's gay subculture, and became a victim of AIDS in the first years of the pandemic. Sanchez describes her brother's alienation from his family and his illness and death from AIDS with her characteristic tenderness. Told in the voices of sister, brother, father, mother, and ancestors, it is the story of kin estranged.

Shakur, Tupac, 1971-1996.

A collection of verse by the late hip-hop star Tupac Shakur includes more than one hundred poems confronting such wide-ranging topics as poverty, motherhood, Van Gogh, and Mandela.

Stein, Gertrude, 1874-1946.

Before becoming the patron of Lost Generation artists, Gertrude Stein established her reputation as an innovative author whose style was closer to painting than literature. Stein's strong influence on 20th-century literature is evident in this 1915 work of highly original prose rendered in thought-provoking experimental techniques.

Stevens, Wallace, 1879-1955.

Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862

Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862, author.

A collection of essential writings features Thoreau's poetry and essays on nature, materialism, conformity, and politics; including such works as "Slavery in Massachusetts," "Civil Disobedience," "A Winter Walk," and "Life Without Principle."

Vuong, Ocean, 1988- author.

Wheatley, Phillis, 1753-1784, author.

A collection of writings by the eighteenth-century slave and author includes her letters, poetry, short fiction, and essays, along with poetry by such contemporary African American poets as Lucy Terry, Jupiter Harmon, and Francis Williams.

Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892.

The edition of Whitman's poems as they were first published is accompanied by an in-depth introduction.

Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963.

Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963, author.

Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963, author.