Popular Poetry Books for Adults
Hundreds of books are added to the Library's collection each month. Here are the most popular Poetry books for adults.
-
Time Is A Mother
"Ocean Vuong's second collection of poetry looks inward, on the aftershocks of his mother's death, and the struggle - and rewards - of staying present in the world. Time Is a Mother moves outward and onward, in concert with the themes of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, as Vuong continues, through his work, his profound exploration of personal trauma, of what it means to be the product of an American war in America, and how to circle these fragmented tragedies to find not a restoration, but the epicenter of the break"--
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View Time Is A Mother -
The Hurting Kind: Poems
"An astonishing collection about interconnectedness-between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves-from National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist Ada Limu00f3n"--
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View The Hurting Kind: Poems -
Also A Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me
"When Ada Calhoun stumbled upon old cassette tapes of interviews her father, celebrated art critic Peter Schjeldahl, had conducted for his never-completed biography of poet Frank O'Hara, she set out to finish the book her father had started forty years earlier. As a lifelong O'Hara fan who grew up amid his bohemian cohort in the East Village, Calhoun thought the project would be easy, even fun, but the deeper she dove, the more she had to face not just O'Hara's past, but also her father's, and her own. The result is a groundbreaking and kaleidoscopic memoir that weaves compelling literary history with a moving, honest, and tender story of a complicated father-daughter bond. Also a Poet explores what happens when we want to do better than our parents, yet fear what that might cost us; when we seek their approval, yet mistrust it. In reckoning with her unique heritage, as well as providing new insights into the life of one of our most important poets, Calhoun offers a brave and hopeful meditation on parents and children, artistic ambition, and the complexities of what we leave behind." --
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View Also A Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me -
How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope
"How to Love the World invites readers to use poetry as part of their daily gratitude practice to uncover the simple gifts of abundance and joy to be found everywhere"--
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope -
Call Us What We Carry: Poems
The presidential inaugural poet--and unforgettable new voice in American poetry--presents a collection of poems that includes the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View Call Us What We Carry: Poems -
Frank: Sonnets
""The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without," Diane Seuss writes in this brilliant, candid work, her most personal collection to date. These poems tell the story of a life at risk of spilling over the edge of the page, from Seuss's working-class childhood in rural Michigan to the dangerous allures of New York City and back again. With sheer virtuosity, Seuss moves nimbly across thought and time, poetry and punk, AIDS and addiction, Christ and motherhood, showing us what we can do, what we can do without, and what we offer to one another when we have nothing left to spare. Like a series of cels on a filmstrip, frank: sonnets captures the magnitude of a life lived honestly, a restless search for some kind of "beauty or relief." Seuss is at the height of her powers, devastatingly astute, austere, and--in a word--frank."--Publisher's website.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View Frank: Sonnets -
Clarity & Connection
"find a partner who accepts you as you are but also inspires you to evolve because they take their own growth serioulsy. love will not seek to change you. it will embrace you so unconditionally that you will feel safe enough to heal the old and put effort into the new. the courage you both have to stay committed to the inner journey wil reflect brightly on your relationship."--back cover.
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View Clarity & Connection -
Bright Dead Things: Poems
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD A finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bright Dead Things examines the dangerous thrill of living in a world you must leave one day and the search to find something that is "disorderly, and marvelous, and ours." A book of bravado and introspection, of feminist swagger and harrowing loss, this fourth collection considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact--tracing in intimate detail the ways the speaker's sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth, and falls in love. Ada Limón has often been a poet who wears her heart on her sleeve, but in these extraordinary poems that heart becomes a "huge beating genius machine" striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. "I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying," the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O'Hara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Limón's work is consistently generous, accessible, and "effortlessly lyrical" (New York Times)--though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt, and lived. (syndetics)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View Bright Dead Things: Poems -
How to Not Be Afraid of Everything
"Explores the vulnerable ways we articulate and reckon with fear: fear of intergenerational trauma and the silent, hidden histories of families. What does it mean to grow up in a take-out restaurant, surrounded by food, just a generation after the Great Leap Forward famine in 1958-62. Full of elegy and resilient joy, these poems speak across generations of survival. How much of the world do we fear? How can we find comfort and ancestral power in this fear?"--
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View How to Not Be Afraid of Everything -
All the Flowers Kneeling
"A profound meditation on physical, emotional, and psychological transformation in the aftermath of imperial violence and interpersonal abuse, from a poet both "tender and unflinching" (Khadijah Queen)"-- (6/25/2022 4:01:47 PM)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View All the Flowers Kneeling