His Shoes Were Far Too Tight


Book Description

Renowned author Daniel Pinkwater and best-selling poet and artist Calef Brown team up to champion the ridiculous! These endlessly fascinating and imaginative poems are as fresh and delightful today as they were when Edward Lear wrote them more than a hundred years ago—from "The Owl and the Pussycat" to "The Pobble Who Has No Toes." This charming book proves that, sometimes, there's nothing children need more than a healthy dose of nonsense!




Travelers Leaving for the City


Book Description

Travelers Leaving for the City is a long song of arrivals and departures, centered around the murder of the poet’s grandfather in 1955 in a Pittsburgh hotel, exploring how such events frame memory, history and language for those they touch. The poems probe the anonymity of cities, and the crucible of travel. The historical impact of arousal, rage, regret, and forgiveness is seen in visions of interrogations and hotels. These poems explore how family bonds, and disruptions shape, the mind and language, all the while urging the reader to listen for traces of ancestors in one’s own mind and body.




New and Selected Poems 1974-1994


Book Description

Justly celebrated as one of our strongest poets, Stephen Dunn selects from his eight collections and presents sixteen new poems marked by the haunting "Snowmass Cycle."




New Collected Poems


Book Description

"George Oppen's New Collected Poems gathers in one volume all of the poet's books published in his lifetime (1908-84), as well as his previously uncollected poems and a selection of his unpublished work." "Editor Michael Davidson has written an introduction to the poet's life and work and supplies generous notes that give readers a deeper understanding of the background of the individual books and references in the poems. Essayist Eliot Weinberger provides a personal remembrance of the poet in his preface, "Oppen Then." This new, revised paperback edition also includes an extraordinary CD of the poet reading from each of his poetry books. Culled from obscure, rarely heard recordings of Oppen when he was in New York, San Francisco, and London at different times in his life, the CD adds a unique dimension to the lifework of one of America's finest poets."--BOOK JACKET.




The Heart of American Poetry


Book Description

An acclaimed poet and our greatest champion for poetry offers an inspiring and insightful new reading of the American tradition We live in unsettled times. What is America and who are we as a people? How do we understand the dreams and betrayals that have shaped the American experience? For poet and critic Edward Hirsch, poetry opens up new ways of answering these questions, of reconnecting with one another and with what’s best in us. In this landmark new book from Library of America, Hirsch offers deeply personal readings of forty essential American poems we thought we knew—from Anne Bradstreet’s “The Author to Her Book” and Phillis Wheatley’s “To S.M. a Young African Painter, on seeing his Works” to Garrett Hongo’s “Ancestral Graves, Kahuku” and Joy Harjo’s “Rabbit Is Up to Tricks”—exploring how these poems have sustained his own life and how they might uplift our diverse but divided nation. “This is a personal book about American poetry,” writes Hirsch, “but I hope it is more than a personal selection. I have chosen forty poems from our extensive archive and songbook that have been meaningful to me, part of my affective life, my critical consideration, but I have also tried to be cognizant of the changing playbook in American poetry, which is not fixed but fluctuating, ever in flow, to pay attention to the wider consideration, the appreciable reach of our literature. This is a book of encounters and realizations.”




100 Poems to Break Your Heart


Book Description

“A really beautiful book” of poems that delve into—and help us transcend—suffering, loss, fear, and loneliness, by the author of How to Read a Poem (The Boston Globe). Implicit in poetry is the idea that we are enriched by heartbreaks, by the recognition and understanding of suffering—not just our own suffering but also the pain of others. We are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish, or to let others vanish, without leaving a record. And poets are people who are determined to leave a trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling into art that speaks to others. In 100 Poems to Break Your Heart, Edward Hirsch—prize-winning poet, critic, and author of How to Read a Poem—selects 100 poems, from the nineteenth century to the present, and illuminates them, unpacking context and references to help the reader fully experience the range of emotion and wisdom within them. “Darkly illuminating.” —Booklist (starred review) “These 100 poems will indeed break hearts, but they also offer examples of resilience, the lasting impact of words, and a wisdom that a reader can return to and share.” —New York Journal of Books




Whale Day


Book Description

‘Funny but serious, accessible but rich in meaning, consistently surprising – the world looks slightly different after reading a Billy Collins poem. He’s a one-off, an American treasure’ Nick Laird These are poems of whimsy and imaginative acrobatics, but they are grounded in the familiar, common things of everyday experience. Collins takes us for a walk with an impossibly ancient dog, discovers the proper way to eat a banana, meets an Irish spider, and invites us to his own funeral. Facing both the wonders of being alive and the thrill of mortality, these new poems can only solidify Collins’s reputation as one of America’s most durable and interesting poets.




The Poems of Dylan Thomas


Book Description

The most complete and current edition of Dylan Thomas' collected poetry in a beautiful gift edition celebrating the centenary of his birth The reputation of Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century has not waned in the fifty years since his death. A Welshman with a passion for the English language, Thomas’s singular poetic voice has been admired and imitated, but never matched. This exciting, newly edited annotated edition offers a more complete and representative collection of Dylan Thomas’s poetic works than any previous edition. Edited by leading Dylan Thomas scholar John Goodby from the University of Swansea, The Poems of Dylan Thomas contains all the poems that appeared in Collected Poems 1934-1952, edited by Dylan Thomas himself, as well as poems from the 1930-1934 notebooks and poems from letters, amatory verses, occasional poems, the verse film script for “Our Country,” and poems that appear in his “radio play for voices,” Under Milk Wood. Showing the broad range of Dylan Thomas’s oeuvre as never before, this new edition places Thomas in the twenty-first century, with an up-to-date introduction by Goodby whose notes and annotations take a pluralistic approach.




Beautiful & Pointless


Book Description

"David Orr is no starry-eyed cheerleader for contemporary poetry; Orr’s a critic, and a good one. . . . Beautiful & Pointless is a clear-eyed, opinionated, and idiosyncratic guide to a vibrant but endangered art form, essential reading for anyone who loves poetry, and also for those of us who mostly just admire it from afar." —Tom Perrotta Award-winning New York Times Book Review poetry columnist David Orr delivers an engaging, amusing, and stimulating tour through the world of poetry. With echoes of Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, Orr’s Beautiful & Pointless offers a smart and funny approach to appreciating an art form that many find difficult to embrace.




Everything Comes Next


Book Description

“Emotionally resonant and stirring.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Lucky the reader who would have this collection lying around for visiting and revisiting.”—Horn Book Magazine This celebratory book collects in one volume award-winning and beloved poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s most popular and accessible poems. Featuring new, never-before-published poems; an introduction by bestselling poet and author Edward Hirsch, as well as a foreword and writing tips by the poet; and stunning artwork by bestselling artist Rafael López, Everything Comes Next is essential for poetry readers, classroom teachers, and library collections. Everything Comes Next is a treasure chest of Naomi Shihab Nye’s most beloved poems, and features favorites such as “Famous” and “A Valentine for Ernest Mann,” as well as widely shared pieces such as “Kindness” and “Gate A-4.” The book is an introduction to the poet’s work for new readers, as well as a comprehensive edition for classroom and family sharing. Writing prompts and tips by the award-winning poet make this an outstanding choice for aspiring poets of all ages.