NYPL Blogs: Poetry Month

Reclaiming My West Indian Roots, with Poetry

Ann-Marie Nicholson, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:53:14 -0400

As a young girl growing up in Jamaica — and later in Brooklyn, NY — I often heard the poetry of Louise Bennett (Jamaicans affectionately call her "Miss Lou") permeate the air. One of my earliest recollections of Miss Lou’s lyricism was hearing the term mout amassi (big mouth). The term comes from the title of one of her most popular poems about a young lady, Liza, who loves to gossip and chat.

To be called a "mout amassi" was far from a compliment and the nickname could follow one around for a lifetime. Adults used it on adults and children alike. Children used it on each other, often eliciting uncontrollable laughter.

I have more fond memories of how Miss Lou’s poetry reverberated throughout my youth and the many phrases that I—as well as my fellow islanders—eagerly adapted to tease as well as to assert my identity.

Many years removed from my childhood, it would take a long time before I returned to my roots. It wasn’t until I was in grad school getting my master’s in English Literature, with a focus on postcolonial literature, that I ventured beyond the poetry of the Romantics and the Harlem Renaissance. In one of my classes, Caribbean Literature, my professor further exposed me to Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanaphone writers and poets, like: Derek Walcott, Olive Senior, Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire, and Reinaldo Arenas. The lyricism of these poets — from varied backgrounds and languages — spoke to me and my cultural identity. I realized, albeit not too late, that the reason these poets resonated with me was because I had never really forgotten my roots — they just needed to be watered and restored.

Below are a few West Indian poets whose works capture and transcend their shared cultural heritage:

Derek Walcott, born in 1930, is from Saint Lucia. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992 for his epic poem, Omeros — based on Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey. Walcott is currently a professor of poetry at the University of Essex.

Kamau Brathwaite was born in Barbados in 1930. He is currently a Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University.

Martin Carter (d. 1997) was a Guyanese poet, whose work came to symbolize post-colonial nationalism.

Grace Nichols was born in Guyana. Grace Nichols lives in England with the poet John Agard and their daughter Kalera. Watch her talk about one of her poems on bbc.co.uk.

John Agard was born in Guyana and currently resides in England.

Olive Senior was born in Jamaica. She currently resides in Toronto, Canada.

Nature Poems for Poetry Month

Melissa Cardinali, Central Collection Development — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:37:52 -0400

In New York City, there is a lot to celebrate during the month of April, National Poetry Month. It feels like poems fill the air as the weather warms, flowers bloom, animals come out of hiding, and, of course, Earth Day arrives! No worries if you missed it yesterday, this post will help you and your children celebrate our Earth (and her fantastic creatures!) with a few recommendations from NYPL's vast collection of poetry for young people.

Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature by Nicola Davies. Inspire your children to go outside and observe the nature around them with this beautiful collection of 50 poems divided by season.

In the Sea by David Elliot. A recent collection of oceanic poems from the author of In the Wild and On the Farm.

Discover the inner workings of the bee community with Douglas Florian's unBEElievables. Each poem is enhanced by supporting information — almost too good to "bee" true! Florian's Poetrees is a creative introduction to 13 different tree species and their parts.

The Hound Dog's Haiku and Other Poems for Dog Lovers by Michael Rosen. Woodcut illustrations accompany each haiku about a different dog breed.

The Tree that Time Built selected by Mary Ann Hoberman and Linda Winston; illustrated by Barbara Fortin. An anthology from some of our favorite poets which celebrates the natural world, especially the connection among living things. A rich resource with glossary and explanatory notes, great for middle school readers, budding scientists and classroom use.

Newbery Honor artist Joyce Sidman's Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature is a beautiful homage to this curious shape, found many places in nature. Written in free-verse; be sure to check out the endnotes for additional information.

Poetry Writing With Adult New Readers, Strategy 1: The List Poem

Hilary Schenker, Seward Park Library — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:18:07 -0400

You have not crossed the bridges I have crossed.
You have not listened to the music I have listened to.
You have not been in the top of the World Trade Center the way I have been there.
You have not seen the waves I have seen.
You have not fallen from horses the way I have fallen.
You have not felt the guns on your neck the way I have felt them.
You have not been in the sea with a big storm in a little boat the way I have been.

—Excerpt from "Don’t Give Me Advice," by Luis Marin, Tompkins Square CRW

This month is National Poetry Month, and here at the Center for Reading and Writing (CRW) some students are experiencing poetry for the first time. Writing a poem for the first time can be intimidating, but there are many possible ways to get started. In this post I’ll talk about just one of them, which is a list poem.

Defining a Poem

The first step when introducing poetry to students is to define poetry. Show what a poem looks like on a page. Explain that a poem is usually short, and that each line has a fixed length. It uses carefully-chosen language to express a feeling, and sometimes uses rhythm, rhyme, or repetition. One CRW student defined a poem as "few words, big meaning."

Writing a List Poem

A list poem is a poem in which each line begins the same way. List poems are wonderful for beginning writers especially, because the start of each line is provided, creating a comfortable way in (at least I have this part that I can write, and know I’m spelling it correctly). A list poem can be simple and powerful. One student, who struggles with depression, wrote a poem in which each line begins, "I love" followed by one thing that makes her feel happy.

5 Tips for Writing a Successful List Poem:

Read poems together as a group, to get students familiar with the sounds and rhythms of it. After reading a poem, ask if there is any line that students like or find interesting. Ask why they like it, what makes it stand out. Keep your ear open for things students say—does something sound like a list poem? "Every morning I..." "I want to read..." "If I had a million dollars I’d..." "I love the way..." The possibilities are endless.

When students are ready to begin writing, here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Be specific

Help students bring their poems to life by including specific details. In other words, show, don’t tell. "I wake up early," becomes, "I wake up at 3:00 am every morning to go to work." Instead of "I cook Chinese food" help the student write, "I cook catfish with spicy sauce."

2. Five senses

Can you see this poem? Can you hear it? Smell it? Feel it? Taste it? Is this poem bringing a world to life? If not, think about describing with the five senses.

3. Order

Pay attention to the order of the list. Does it have a beginning? A middle? An end? Does it need an additional line to bring it to a close?

4. Word Choice

Think about word choice. Could another word be more effective? Sometimes beginning writers want to use the word "beautiful," but write "nice" instead because it is easier to spell. Help the writer actualize the poem in her mind.

5. Edit

Don’t be afraid to edit. 'Make it Messy' is a good mantra for first drafts. They should have crossed out parts and additions. Are any items in the list extraneous? Are there unnecessary repetitions? Help students build the confidence to edit themselves.

Happy poetry writing to all! I’ll leave you with this list poem by Joseph, a student at the Tompkins Square CRW. The title is, "She Is Full of Life:"

When she smiles, life comes out of her.
When she walks down the street, she has a smile on her face,
people all around her look at her and see life.
When she comes into a room, she brightens up the room itself.
When people see her, they are also happy to see her smiling.
She makes the day.

A Poem A Day

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 08:01:12 -0400

April is National Poetry Month, and I promised myself to read a poem a day. Some poets of the black experience immediately came to mind: Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Claude McKay, Sonia Sanchez, Audrey Lorde, to name a few. But then I decided to venture unto new territory and immerse myself into recent works.

I selected four great poets — and distinguished scholars training new generations — who published collections in 2010 and 2011. I found history, current events and the future in their works; and grace, beauty, heartache, struggles and joy.

Nikky Finney, a dear friend of the Schomburg Center said it, of course much better, in an interview with the National Book Foundation. "I am incredibly drawn to history; personal history, American history, Southern history, family history, the history of a community, the history of secrets, the history that has gone missing, the history that has been told by the lion hunter but not the lion, the history of pencils, of loss, of tenderness, the history of what the future just might be if we would only... I believe our many beautiful ways of saying and communicating and the telling of our stories has been taken for granted and we can't let that happen. All of us who make something with our hands and hearts must step into every arena that we possibly can and bring with us the most eloquent, charged, radical (radical only means grabbing it by the root), tender, truthful words spilling from our arms. Our children deserve this from us."

Nikky Finney, 2011 National Book Award for Poetry, Provost’s Distinguished Service Professor of English at the University of Kentucky

Finney at the National Book Award Ceremony

Terrance Hayes, 2010 National Book Award for Poetry, Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University

Hayes reading from Lighthead

Thomas Sayers Ellis, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College

Ellis reading "All their Stanzas Look Alike"

Tracy K. Smith, 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University

Smith reads some of her poems

On April 17, come celebrate National Poetry Month at the Schomburg Center with Yusef Komunyakaa, Distinguished Senior Poet at New York University.

What else can you do? The Academy of American Poets — which inaugurated the National Poetry Month in 1996 — shares some ideas.

A Poet's Poet: Gregory Corso

John Flood, Hudson Park Branch Library — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:38:58 -0400

Gregory Corso was born at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City. His family lived near Bleecker and MacDougal streets at the time of his birth.

His birthday is March 26.

His famous poem "Marriage" can be found online, but I'll quote his epitaph here:

Spirit
is Life
It flows thru
the death of me
endlessly
like a river
unafraid
of becoming
the sea

This marks his grave in Rome, at the foot of Percy Bysshe Shelley's grave.

First Fig: Edna St. Vincent Millay in the Village

John Flood, Hudson Park Branch Library — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:24:16 -0500

The house is for sale again, apparently — One of the most famous in Greenwich Village, 75 1/2 Bedford Street, otherwise known as the skinniest house in New York.

Formerly, it was the home of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her birthday is February 22.

Perhaps Millay's fate was to live in the Village. How many people are named after a hospital, after all? Born in Maine, she was named for the Village institution that saved her uncle's life.

In later life, Millay lived in upstate New York — in Austerlitz, at Steepletop, which is preserved in her memory.

Three hundred and sixty-five of her poems are available from Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, but here are two samples of her work.

This appears etched on the wall of the Manhattan terminal of the Staten Island Ferry:

We were very tired, we were very merry —
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

"Recuerdo"

But her best known poem is:

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light.

"First Fig"

Life is a Stream: Amy Lowell in the Village

John Flood, Hudson Park Branch Library — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 06:21:00 -0500

Amy Lowell was a poet who lived for a time at 61 Washington Square in New York City. February 9 is her birthday.

Here is a short selection from her work:

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart.

"Petals," from Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912)

658 of her poems are available though Columbia Granger's World of Poetry.

She was postumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.

Joining the Club: The Poetry of David Shapiro

Jeremy Czerw, Battery Park City — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:28:32 -0500

Perhaps it's because audiences for poetry are a bit smaller than some of the other genres I'm drawn to, but whenever I finally get around to reading a poet others have recommended to me, it seems like knocking on the door to a little club of sorts. When the poet is as interesting as David Shapiro, one hopes to return to that door again and again.

Shapiro is one of many distinguished contributors to the new journal Bridge, which promises "collaborations between poets, visual artists, musicians, and accountants." A reading from Issue One takes place Monday, February 13 at the Poetry Project.

Mr. Flood's Party

John Flood, Hudson Park Branch Library — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:43:47 -0500

If you are of a certain age, you may be familiar with Edwin Arlington Robinson from a Simon and Garfunkel song, "Richard Cory." The words of the song were changed somewhat from what Robinson wrote but it still ended with the same shocking, brutal conclusion. Here’s the whole poem:

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

"Children of the Night" (1910)

Edwin Arlington Robinson grew up in Gardiner, Maine, but spent part of his career in the Village, residing at 51 Washington Square South, 121 Washington Place and 28 W. 8th Street. December 22 is his birthday.

The other Edwin Arlington Robinson poem that made an impression on me, for obvious reasons, was "Mr. Flood’s Party."

My parties are nothing like Mr. Flood's.

Made of Stories

John Flood, Hudson Park Branch Library — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 05:21:42 -0500

Muriel Rukeyser, poet and activist, was born on December 15, 1913.

She lived in Westbeth at Bethune and West Streets in the West Village.

Her words will tell you more about her than anything I can write:

"To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944)
To be a Jew in the twentieth century
Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,
Wishing to be invisible, you choose
Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.
Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:
Your evening deep in labyrinthine blood
Of those who resist, fail, and resist; and God
Reduced to a hostage among hostages.
The gift is torment. Not alone the still
Torture, isolation; or torture of the flesh.
That may come also. But the accepting wish,
The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee
For every human freedom, suffering to be free,
Daring to live for the impossible.

And the brilliant:

The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

Her papers can be found in the Berg Collection.

Winter is an Etching: An Artistic Quotation

Jessica Cline, Mid-Manhattan Library, Art and Picture Collections — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:45:01 -0500

Every November, the searches for Stanley Horowitz on Google gain momentum. Horowitz, a poet, published a tranquil 18 word poem in the November 1983 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine, page 109. Some years later the poem was posted to a list of autumn quotations on the Internet, sandwiched between poetry giants like John Keats and Robert Frost, and it has been used ubiquitously all over the web ever since.

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. — Stanley Horowitz

As one of my regular patrons, Horowitz was interested to know how many websites his poem is quoted on. A search of his name and the first line of the poem retrieved around 1,630,000 results. His lines about the seasons are being used in many interesting ways, from grief counseling to public parks, from a legislative seat to a Philippine newspaper, and by many other locations across the world. Most call the words “inspirational.”

His poem has been illustrated with images on Flickr (to the left is one by photographer Jenny Downing), as a starting point for fall fashion blogs, and are certainly on the minds of many lunching in Bryant Park on a crisp November day. He has even been quoted in a book titled 365 Prescriptions for the Soul by Dr. Bernie S. Siegel. All are unaware that the man who has touched them with his words of beauty is across the street on the third floor of Mid-Manhattan Library, looking up paintings in books to inspire his new project — an entire book of poems about the seasons. For all of those websites that don't really know who or where the quote came from — Horowitz is here in New York. Look for him at the Library.

Well, Horowitz, now you can expect a return of 1,630,001 results. And thank you for letting me inspire others with your poem.

Slam Poetry in NYC

Charlie Radin, Summer Intern — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:33:02 -0400

Slam Poetry is alive and well in New York City and beyond. Check out this slam the NYPL and Urban Word hosted at the Bronx Library Center, featuring the Precision Poetry Drill Team. With so many of the Urban Word visiting poets coming from the Slam tradition, I want to take a moment and discuss the art form and point you towards exciting Slam events, videos, and resources in New York City.

The history of slam poetry is complicated, almost as complicated as trying to find the first Ray’s Pizza in New York. However, most agree that the first Poetry Slams were held at the Green Mill Jazz Club in Chicago, IL, circa 1984. Slam is a freewheeling, ever-evolving form. Everyone from hip hop emcees to punk rockers have tried their hand at Slamming.

The best way to define slam to is to leave it to two prolific poets. Saul Williams rhymes, “We are determined, to be the channelers of these changing frequencies into songs, paintings, writings, dance, photography, carpentry, love, and LOVE.” Rapper and occasional poet Common says, ‘I sing a song for the hero unsung, with faces on the mirror of the revoluSHUN...” Slam is yet one more way that creative people are expressing themselves. As soon as someone defines it, someone else comes along and changes the game.

In a typical Slam, poets are given a fixed amount of time (usually 3 minutes) to perform their poem. Other than that, nothing is out of bounds. You just need to rock the crowd with your words. Props are thought to detract from the poetry, and are almost never allowed. Check out Saul Williams absolutely throwing down in this clip.

Urban Word NYC holds a Slam Tournament throughout the Winter and Spring, culminating in a final Slam at the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem, with prizes and celebrity judges and performers. The tournament is free and open to everyone. Visit UrbanWordNYC on the web for more details.

If you can’t wait until next year to start slamming, the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe has been hosting Open Slams for twenty years, and they are going strong. They host Open Slams every Wednesday and Friday night. For more information, visit nuyorican.org.

NYPL also hosts poetry slams throughout the year. Check our calendar of events at nypl.org/events, and select “Literature, Poetry, and Writing” from the Event Topics menu.

Step up to the microphone and get started!

The Tree of Life & the Poem of Being

Trevor Owen Jones — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 06:28:21 -0400

The Tree of Life opens May 27th in theaters; of course, having not yet seen the film there is little I can say about it (the studio released only a few plot details), but a discussion of his previous films may inform a deeper viewing more than simply assuming a passive stance. All too often, we are encouraged to receive films or books this way, in some vague popular idea that our minds are storage receptacles and that we simply experience a movie more or less in the fashion the filmmakers intended. I would like to counter this idea and promote a very much active participation when people 'read' a book or 'watch' a movie, and to counter it properly I will invoke and introduce some ideas of the notorious German philosopher, Martin Heidegger.

I do not bring up Heidegger without reason. A curious fact about Terrence Malick's pre-cinematic career is his role as a philosopher: he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and Northwestern later published his translation of Heidegger's Essence of Reasons. Heidegger famously called language "the house of being" and viewed poetry as the speech of genuine thinking. April being National Poetry Month, this writer saw fit to meditate on Malick, Heidegger and poetry together in a composite trifecta which, although will not approach any genuine thinking itself, may encourage others to read and watch for themselves...

A central conceit to Heidegger's work is the idea of being (or, "Being"). This may sound simpler than it really is. Heidegger claims that philosophy (or, 'Philosophy') since the time of Plato forgot the question of being, and instead erroneously focused on questions of knowledge. When Heidegger asks in Being and Time, 'what does it mean to be?', he is not speaking of mere empirical existence. Rather he designates a difference between the 'ontic' and the 'ontological'. Indeed, Heidegger is often credited with reinvigorating ontology as a legitimate domain of inquiry in 20th (and 21st) century philosophy, and his influence is remarkably strong to this day in continental philosophy.

Heidegger uses the term "Being There," Dasein, to roughly express the 'presence' of a being whose Being is an issue— he was careful not to designate it as human, an 'individual', a self or a consciousness— instead, Dasein connotes the spatial relationship of Being to itself, and how it is always-already Being-in-the-world.

In later life, Heidegger focused more on language and technology in his thinking. In Language, Poetry, Thought he writes,

           "The poetic character of thinking is
                        still veiled over.

            Where it shows itself, it is for a
               long time like the utopism of
                  a half-poetic intellect.

               But poetry that thinks is in truth
                  the topology of Being.

                This topology tells Being the
                 whereabouts of its actual
                          presence. "

Terrence Malick's visually poetic films— featuring cameras that hover across landscapes and ethereal, inhuman vistas, persons and situations seem to appear and recede like the tide: processual drones of ebb and flow, wax and wain sound through time and space. This aesthetic distance, this angel's-eye-view, is not just stylized cinematography; in Malick's hands there is an earnest attempt at cinematic reflection, without the Earthly chatter of the 'ontic'...

For instance, take Malick's characters— less than fully fleshed humans, it is their spectral humanity that is held in relief. Malick's mute and quietist approach to existential intensities (love, war, violence) points not to 'flat affect', but precisely its opposite: the crocus of affect birthed out of life, the veils of Being. We never quite approach Kit's pathology in Badlands, in Days of Heaven we're only given so much of the Farmer to reconcile with his loneliness, or only so much of Bill's anguish and restlessness. In The Thin Red Line, we are given, "What's this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself? The land contend with the sea? Is there an avenging power in nature? Not one power, but two?"

Later, we hear: "Where is it that we were together? Who were you that I lived with? The brother. The friend. Darkness, light. Strife and love. Are they the workings of one mind? The features of the same face? Oh, my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining."

Malick's films are less "stories" but a secularized negative theology reducing Being to itself, its presence and its duration. The 'aura' of these things (or this 'Thing') may be arguable but the overall point is driven home: beyond the incessant chattering of the mind (the modern's world obsession with business and technology) the transcendent noumenal/immanent phenomenal are really one and the same.

Hwanhee Lee writes, "Malick's understanding of cinema seems to be influenced by Heidegger's contention that it is a cardinal symptom of modernity (which he claims has its deepest roots in Greek thinking) to apprehend reality as something to be differentiated from how it appears to a subjective consciousness, and that the reality is understood at the most fundamental level as something to be mastered." This brings to mind Heidegger's term, gelassenheit, meaning self-surrender, yielding and acceptance.

This openness, or perhaps even some rarified prostrated gaze, on Being and Life comes to mind in Malick's presentations of images and sound: long, flowing uncut shots of landscape, disembodied voices, nature and wilderness, the luminous appearance of things, the thrownness of our lives into the world. Ultimately, this openness is no pious "worship", but utterly amorous inquiry; we are often led to believe that films and books, likewise life and existence, are phenomena analagous to language's declarative sentences which present information 'as is'. This modern way of thinking inexorably leads to the false idea that reality 'is' a 'something' that can be mastered: but ultimately explanations explain nothing, all explaining is just explaining away...

Perhaps, instead, we might consider that Being at its fount poses itself as a question unceasingly; its form is strictly the interrogative, and the only road there is through poetry.

Thrown into the world,
                faced with nothing but death
             (the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life)
               with or without aura,
               poetry as
              the House of Being
                    will have to suffice.

*For Henry, who I have no answers for, only questions.

April in the Reader's Den: Featured Poets from the L.E.S Review

Sherri Liberman, Mulberry Branch — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 06:38:22 -0400

Our final week of April in the Reader's Den will focus on the selected works of poets contributing to a new poetry and arts journal, The L.E.S Review, founded by poet, artist, and Pratt Institute Library and Information Science student Jesi Bender.

In the five years Jesi has lived in New York City, she has accumulated friends in all facets of the arts, and worked for various art institutions throughout Manhattan and Williamsburg. In other words, Bender saw both the artist and the business of art, and found that these entities did not necessarily go hand-in-hand. She was continually shocked that even in the hipster "l'art pour l'art" DIY scene, there was such disparity between the vast amount of talented artists in New York, and the limited opportunities for them to display their work.

Determined to create an outlet for promising new artists who don't necessarily have an impressive resume of work already behind their name, Bender created L.E.S. Review , a contemporary art and poetry journal, from her tiny apartment on Clinton Street. L.E.S. Review remains committed to the promotion of talent, no matter their experience or pedigree. You can visit the journal and submit your work at LESreview.com.

Poet Biographies

Gale Acuff has published poetry in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Verse Wisconsin, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, Poem, Carolina Quarterly, Maryland Poetry Review, the Florida Review, Amarillo Bay, South Dakota Review, Santa Barbara Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008). He has taught university English in the U.S., China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

William Cordeiro has an MFA in poetry from Cornell, where he is currently a Ph.D. candidate studying 18th century British literature. He is also the co-founder of Brooklyn Playwrights Collective and has had several plays produced in regional and off-off-Broadway venues, including a libretto performed at the Johnson Museum of Art. For the past two years he has been the Artist-in-Residence at Risley Residential College. His poems are forthcoming in journals such as Brooklyn Review, lafovea, L.E.S. Review, Sentence, Barely South Review, and Word for/Word.

Ivan Jenson Ivan Jenson has enjoyed unprecedented success publishing his poetry in the US, the UK, Sweden and France, and has received recognition for his contributions in Pop Art. His Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and he has sold several works at Christie’s New York. Ivan Jenson is highly sought after for his popular and dynamic live readings on the stage. His poems have appeared in Word Riot, Camroc Press Review, Poetry Super Highway, Alternative Reel Poets Corner, Underground Voices magazine, Blazevox, and many others. Ivan Jenson is also a Contributing Editor for Commonline magazine. He now writes novels and poetry in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Visit his website at ivanjensonartist.com.

Juan Lamata was born in Venezuela, trained in youth soccer in South Florida, and set loose on a small but densely populated chain of islands in the North Atlantic. He enjoys writing, inspirational bob-sledding movies, and tomfoolery. If you know of his whereabouts, keep them to yourself.

Marcel Logan is a Jamaican poet living in New York City. He has previously published poetry in the Federal Poets Journal, and McGill University’s poetry anthology, The Montage. Most recently, he has two poems forthcoming in the Summer and Autumn editions of The L.E.S. Review ; and one forthcoming in the online journal, Tongues of The Ocean. He recently read his material at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in SoHo. Much of his work is thematically concerned with the human condition, memory, intimacy, identity and the process and purpose of language and poetry.

David H. Sutherland has been published in The American Literary Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The Adirondack Review, Poetry Magazine, The Los Angeles Review and others.

Gunga Din, UNEARTHED!
(for Ezra Pound)

by D. H. Sutherland

After Barack I lost my karma
the funk the sway
my swagger, gone.

My homie’s kitsch
of bling went blank
is now a fossil in a 9 to 5 year.

And like a Lucy on record
the Australopithecus unearthed,
my joie de vivre

wears dust and lime.
At the dig site, dear brother
you were

this thoroughfare called life,
a bizness of love and pain,
empathy’s shared history!

Our commerce ends.

Online lament

by Ivan Jenson

Nothing

boggles

Googles

mind

all it does is

give and give

information

to anyone

who searches

and

when my

computer

goes to

sleep

it stays up

answering

the insomniacs

brianiacs

sociopaths

and all

who seek

facts

or fiction

swinging

from mind

to mind

Amazon

so go ahead

and connect

the dot coms

but if you

search for yourself

in this virtual world

don’t forget

it doesn’t matter

what they say

about you

as long as

they get your link right

If you’ve ever…

by Juan Lamata

If you’ve ever…

Relied on the possibility of hangover
     induced telepathy
Caught a cold, caught a train and caught
     yourself from ruin in one breath
Stared into the sun until it blinked
     and thought My God
Sipped calamity through a straw and become indifferent
     to evil
Stood next to the well-dressed Wall Street standards of industry and chanted ruin
     ruin to draw out the imps and angels of Revolution
Broken a name into its parts such as Bushwick, Bellview
     Springfield or Schuylkill.
Sat on the shore of something immense and thought
     there is always something grander and missing
Over pronounced the words mignon and motel to the point
     of indistinguishability
Written a love letter in a dream
     using only words from the Anglo-Saxon and the fantastical
Been invited to speak at a colloquium on symposiums
     but declined because of a “special” engagement
Spent four days scheming of ways to get locked into a museum
     before abandoning the project after seeing prophetic, profane and prohibitory
     writing on a bathroom wall

Then you know what I’m talking about.

Dragonfly Ensemble

by Marcel Logan

I brought you something warm
so you could sit and watch
the dragonfly dance in quartet

by my river and country

which is still developing

with the street vendor

who won't throw out garbage and

the mad-man who guards the entrance

to the hollow shack of a run-down Omni-theatre.

This dance of dragonfly divas convenes at seven pm precisely

and amidst the din of leaky mufflers chugging over spilled change

these panhandlers are fishermen with hooks
and those hookers are life-vests, with looks.

Then you came along and found us,

without expecting the neon lights

or the metropolitan museum of modern anti-art;

we’re still reveling in independence, laughing

with cheap and heavy sighs.

This was my cultural belonging

before we dated and dissolved

into a desire vaster than the idea of desire.

And you.

You and your doubtful mumbles, and that pout,

so petulant a twist on the lips of an orchidian mouth,

with whirls of metallic clips orchestrating hair wound and

worked patiently into Antillean frames.

I note each melody your skin plays, knot

as I listen to your breath and watch steam lift us home.

You cried happy in the noon downpour

as our glutted umbrellas shook open

fertile with hope against the falling shower.

Return

by William Cordiero

Soon, just minding your own business
of licking stamps and tasting wine,
you’ll feel the quarter-turn
of some memory of her inside you,
its future tense unhinge its breath and coil.
You’ll glance back half a shoulder long,
a sudden sense that something’s wrong.

You’ll suffer back to look again—
where all things rise,
reverse their gravity

as of a pleasure now revised;

leaf-pattern crippled in her hair
pinned-up into a chopstick bun.
Cinched there, you’ll feel
the face that fits into your eyes.

Unpinned, a gash of sun upon the sea
strides back—a nightfall’s wind-blonde waves
where light alone rides out the tides.

And you are there again, only.

Jesi Belle waits for the hounds

To Yonah, by Jesi Bender

Jesi Belle waits for the hounds,

With coal round her eyes

And tint on her lips,

Or for a dove released from the sea,

Like breath from a mouth -

And she patiently sits.

By the window, the soft glow

Of a halo of red burns

The whore sits and hopes for

Her monomaniacal sailor

Away hunting that thing in the sea

That remains an elusive captor –

It’s that something some deep men feel eating inside them

(Inside the man is a fish inside a fish inside a man)

He knows she’s something that the people do not condone

The cold white of her skin opaquely shimmers like bone

And him, living only “on half a heart and a half lung”

So the woman who loves him sits all alone

In a room cross the water,

Drinking stolen kosher wine

She realizes this is done –

Dogs barking in the distance

A vengeful people grow closer,

The people made in His image have won.

The sky is orange as teeth cut through,

Blood runs sweet as Manischewitz.

Easily erased - though it had been rough

asking, ‘Who’s G-d isn’t a giant phallus?’

And silencing the prophetic tongues

Who told her that love wasn’t enough.

Now - where is the heart, the core of her flesh?

All I see are her arms, her legs and her head.

They wanted it this way,

As far as I can tell,

So no one would ever be able to say;

“This, this was Jesi Belle”.

Holy Love

by Gale Acuff

After Sunday School today I linger

for a chance to talk to Miss Hooker, my

teacher. I mean our teacher but somehow other

kids don't count. I guess that's not Christian

but the truth is that she belongs to me

and I'm going to try to tell her so

even if it kills me, or she turns me

down, whichever comes first, but in a way

they're the same thing. I've been praying each night

this week that God will grant a miracle

and I won't say that I'm not selfish but

it seems to me what's good for me is good

for Miss Hooker, too. Sometimes love's that way

--Father, for example, punishing me

by saying This is going to hurt me

as much, or more, than it hurts you . Maybe,

but at least his pain isn't in his butt

though it's true I'm a pain in the ass now

and then. I can't help it. I'm only 10

and Father's nearly 40--that's almost

dead. Miss Hooker looks to be 25

so she's getting up there, too, but I've prayed

that God will keep her at that age until

I catch up--that'll be fifteen years. When

we've evened out I'll call on her. I'll bring

flowers and candy and maybe hairspray,

which girls like, and maybe a pair of shoes,

which girls also like. I'm smart, watch TV,

and even have sisters, but won't tell them

how I feel about my sweetheart because

they'd just make fun of me. I'm waiting at

the classroom door for Miss Hooker to turn

around and erase the board--can't have her

watching me march up to her but I don't

want to sneak around, either, and scare her.

When she's erased the big chalk Crucifix

and starts to turn around I make my move

and approach her desk and quietly cough,

--I guess it's a kind of warning, or like

knocking on a door or ringing a bell

--and clear my throat but it's clear already,

adults do that a lot, another kind

of signal--and say Hello Miss Hooker,

again, ha ha, and she laughs Ha ha , and

I look her in the eyes and she looks back

and two eyes plus two eyes equal four eyes,

not to be mistaken for glasses but

she does wear them so I guess it's six eyes.

And I say Miss Hooker, I've got something

to say to you, and clear my throat again

and this time it needs it and she says, Oh

what is it, Gale , and smiles and I reveal

--that's like Revelation in the Bible

or part of it, so God is with me or

Jesus, at least, and the son is better

than nothing if the father is busy

--wait, no, I don't mean that, I'm not too up

on my religion but maybe they're both

equal and as for the Holy Spirit,

He's even more a mystery than They

--I love you, and I have to cough the words

but at least I set them free, maybe they're

what clogged my throat and I had to spit them

out. Oh, that's nice, Miss Hooker says, I love

you, too, and she smiles again but she's lost

my meaning, not that she ever had it.

Won't you walk me to my car, please , she says.

Yes ma'am, I say, words I'd never use with

a girlfriend but I'll be married one day

to some gal, if not Miss Hooker. so that

may change, and Father says it to Mother

though it doesn't seem to make her happy

but he just smiles as he tries to kiss her

and make it better, whatever her pain.

I open the car door for Miss Hooker.

She's my girlfriend now and my next question

for the next Sunday is Will you make me

the happiest man on earth even though

I'm still a boy? I wonder what she'll say.

And the Sunday after that I'll ask her

Can you wait fifteen years for me? Won't she

be surprised then that she hasn't aged one

second? That's if God answers my prayer

for a miracle and I don't see why

He wouldn't, I've already sweated Hell

these past five minutes. I feel older than

that now. Maybe I'm creeping up on her

or maybe it's happening like I prayed.

Miss Hooker gets in and her pretty legs

stick in my throat but I manage to

shut the door and remind her to strap on

her safety belt. Why, thank you, Gale, she says.

That's good advice. Goodbye , and I stand clear,

maybe like Ezekiel stepped back when

those wheels-with-wheels brought him back to earth.

I can see Miss Hooker looking at me

in her side mirror. I wave and her smile

gets bigger but then her face gets smaller

and soon I can't see her at all. Tonight

I'll try to see her again, in a dream,

I mean. We'll tell each other I love you .

I'll teach her how to kiss, not that I know.

After the Kiss: A (poetic) Review

Emma Carbone, Epiphany Library — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:11:25 -0400

Camille isn't impressed with her new town. It's nothing like her old town (or the one before that, or the one before that). It's tedious making new friends during senior year only to move on like she always does, like they all will with college around the corner. Still, she'll put on a show and pretend it all matters while she marks time until her escape like she always does.

Until she meets Alec at a party. He isn't the boy she left behind. But he's here. He's smart. He's a poet. That's pretty close to perfect.

Camille doesn't want to get involved or care, not really. But when Alec kisses her out of nowhere at a party isn't that what he's asking for? Isn't that the right thing to do?

Becca is in love and it's wonderful. She sees Alec after school, on the weekends, during her free time. Being with him, being a girlfriend to his boyfriend, doesn't leave a lot of time for other things. But Alec is enough. He's smart. He's a poet. He's perfect. In fact, they're perfect for each other.

At least, Becca thought so until Alec kisses some girl at a party.

After the kiss Becca is heartbroken, Camille is confused. In another life they might have been friends. That won't happen now, but maybe after everything they can find themselves instead in After the Kiss (2010) by Terra Elan McVoy.

Love triangles are nothing new in young adult literature, or any literature really. But McVoy looks at this familiar situation in a new way and from all sides in this clever verse novel. Even though the book is ostensibly about a kiss and romance, it's more than that too as both Becca and Camille are forced to take a hard look at who they are before and after the kiss in alternating narrations in their own unique poetic styles.

Both of the characters, especially Becca for me, are authentic narrators who grow and change throughout the story. They are achingly human with moments where they are unlikable and far from perfect. Still by the end of the story readers will find themselves cheering for both heroines and wondering, like the girls themselves, how things could have been different without that kiss.

After the Kiss is McVoy's second novel. It is also a smart, smart book written in verse that is filled with emotion, humor, and even nods to other famous poets. If you are an English major or just a poetry lover After the Kiss is a must read.

Possible Pairings: A Little Wanting Song by Cath Crowley, The Lonely Hearts Club by Elizabeth Eulberg, The Boy Book by E. Lockhart, The Unwritten Rule by Elizabeth Scott

Want to know more? You can read an interview with Terra Elan McVoy about this book on Miss Print. You can also enter this month to win a signed copy from the author.

April in the Reader's Den: Rainer Maria Rilke

Sherri Liberman, Mulberry Branch — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:00:58 -0400

Once upon a time, when I was a backpacking young Bohemian visiting Prague, I had a roomate who introduced me to the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Having toted the books with him across continents for quiet contemplation, I wondered, what was it about Rilke's words that inspired such steadfast devotion?

Born in Prague in 1875 in what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire, Rilke evolved as a writer to become one of the most important lyric poets published in the 20th century. Rilke's poetry was originally composed in German, and translated into English beginning in the 1930s, granting him a wider audience. A brief romance followed by a life-long friendship between Rilke and the psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salome (fifteen years his senior) was the inspiration for some of his most famous works. After he ended his marriage to Clara Westhoff, Rilke moved, penniless, to Paris and became the secretary of the sculptor Auguste Rodin, eventually publishing a monograph of his work. Rodin also profoundly influenced Rilke's style, bringing about more of a stony, concrete, factual tone to his poems. Among Rilke's most famous poetry colllections are "Requiem for A Friend," written after the death of the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker in 1907, the "Duino Elegies," inspired by the sheer cliffs he saw while a guest at the Castle Duino, and "Sonnets to Orpheus," devoted to a playmate of his daughter Ruth who died very young.

Here is a selection from The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by A. Poulin, Jr.

The Roses

If we're sometimes so amazed
I see you, rose, half-open book
Rose, O you completely perfect thing
Suely it was us who encouraged
Abandon surrounds abandon
Single rose is every rose. A
Bright cool rose leaning
Overflowing with your dream
Rose, so clear and yet so fiery
Friend of hours when no one remains
I'm conscious of your being
Rose, against whom
Rose, do you prefer to be the ardent friend
Summer, for a few days being
All alone/ O abundant flower
Let's not speak of you. Ineffable
It's you who in you is preparing
You're touched by all that touches us
Do you set yourself up as example?
Except from your inner
All that spinning on your stem
You again, you rising
Late-blooming rose that the bitter
Rose, certainly earthly and our equal
Rose, so cherished by our customs
infinitely at ease
Rose, did you have to be left?

Questions for discussion

Do you see any similarities between this poem and the work of Bashō, whom we read last week? Why or why not?
Regarding the rose, in what ways do you think Rilke meant "You're touched by all that touches us."?
Why do you think flowers are so often a subject of poetry?

Please share your thoughts with us on this poem.

April in the Reader's Den: The Haiku of Matsuo Bashō

Sherri Liberman, Mulberry Branch — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:22:54 -0400

The Edo period of Japan (1603 - 1868) was considered one of the most stable and peaceful eras in Japanese history. At this time Japan was a fuedalist state ruled by shoguns of the Tokugawa family, but there was simultaneously a significant flourishing of arts and culture. A revival of the principles of Confucianism, and an openness towards embracing Western science and technology characterized this period. It was the height of Kabuki theatre, geisha entertainment, and Ukiyo-e printmaking. One of the most prominent poets to emerge from the Edo period was Matsuo Bashō (b. 1644 - d. 1694).

The son of a samurai, Bashō discovered at a young age a love of haiku, the traditional Japanese verse with a 5-7-5 syllabic structure. He moved to Edo (now Tokyo) in 1672, became a renowned poet among fashionable urban literary circles, but eventually forsook the city for a rustic hut in Fukugawa. He began practicing Zen meditation, and his poems increasingly focused on naturalistic themes. He embarked on four major journeys throughout Japan during his lifetime, a dangerous undertaking in medieval Japan. Routes were often fraught with bandits... Bashō evenually returned to Edo, and became a saught-out teacher of haiku.

Here is a sampling of some of Bashō's verse:

A Shell of a Cicada

The shell of a cicada

Its body consumed, haply by crying,

There remains only the cicada's shell.

Don't Imitate Me

Don't imitate me

as the two halves

of a melon

The master of the profound within the form of simplicity, find more of Bashō's work at the library.

Questions

In this week's Reader's Den, we encourage participants to write and share their own haiku. Readers can submit their haiku using the form below.

The Challenges of Finding a Pocket-Sized Poem

Andrea Lipinski, Kingsbridge Library — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 06:58:22 -0400

Thursday April 14th is Poem in Your Pocket Day. This tradition began in New York City in 2002 and expanded nationally several years later. If you go to New York City's PIYPD page, you can learn about special events that will take place that day, and even read some poems by mayor Michael Bloomberg. But let's get to the real question... how will you pick the right poem for your pocket?

First, let me begin with a story from my own past that emphasizes the challenges of finding a small poem which is worthy of both reading and sharing with others. Because the goal of Poem in Your Pocket Day is not only to carry a poem around in your own pocket, but also to share that poem with other people. And because choosing a poem can be a very personal thing, the sharing of that poem may be fraught with peril. For example:

Back in the mists of prehistory (when I was in the 6th grade) we each kept a journal in our creative writing class. I had a standard-issue black marble notebook, filled with my thoughts and musings. Except I was very careful not to write down thoughts that were TOO personal. Because our teacher was, excuse me for saying so, kind of a busybody. Now, I know that teachers who read their students' writings and see indications of abuse, suicidal tendencies, etc. are supposed to report it. Believe me, I understand that. But this teacher would read our journals and then think that she was really looking into our souls. She would then take her newfound "understanding" and spin it in embarassing ways. The day she called me up to the front of the classroom to tell me in front of everyone that I should smile more often was one of the most embarassing moments of my young life. So clearly I wasn't considering the consequences when she asked us to pick a favorite poem and copy it into our journals.

I had two reasons for trying to find a short poem. One was that I was near the bottom of the current page of my journal, so I wanted to pick a poem that would fit in the remaining space. The other was that earlier that year (or was it the year before?) a teacher had asked us about our favorite poems and when I'd said that most of my favorite poems were several pages long, the entire class had burst out laughing. FWIW, "Annabel Lee" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter" each took up several pages in my parents' 1957 edition of Poems to Read Aloud, so I wasn't lying. Anyway, in an effort to escape further public humiliation I decided to look through my parents' book and copy the shortest poem that I could find. I chose this one, a poem that I had never read before, but which was short and easy to understand. It's by Oliver St. John Gogarty, who lived from 1878-1957:

Death May Be Very Gentle

Death may be very gentle after all:
He turns his face away from arrogant knights
Who fling themselves against him in their fights;
But to the loveliest he loves to call.
And he has with him those whose ways were mild
And beautiful; and many a little child.

So... you see where this is going, right? You guessed it. That teacher was TOTALLY FREAKED OUT by the poem I chose. She was convinced that because I'd chosen a poem about death, and about the possibility of a child dying, that I was not long for this world. It took a lot of explaining to get out of that one.

So if I can impart no other piece of wisdom to you, it's this: if your favorite pocket-sized poem is one that's going to make your teachers (or even your friends) think that you're a little nuts, then pick TWO poems to keep in your pockets. Put one in one pocket in case anybody asks you to share it, and put one in the other pocket just for yourself.

So now that THAT'S out of the way... where can you find some great poems?

If you stop by your local library, we have lots of books of poetry available for you to check out. If you want to start browsing, look for the 811 call number for poetry by American authors, which is where you'll find most of our poetry books. And as you browse through the 800s section, you can find poetry by authors from all over the world. Here are a few titles that are definitely worth checking out:

The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac Shakur
Love, Ghosts, & Facial Hair by Steven Herrick
Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda (bilingual edition)
A Lion's Hunger: Poems of First Love by Ann Turner
The Haiku Anthology edited by Cor van den Heuvel [Pssssst! No better place to look for the smallest poems!]
In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African-American Poetry edited by E. Ethelbert Miller
Love: Selected Poems by e.e. cummings
Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls edited by Betsy Franco
Slam Dunk: Basketball Poems edited by Lillian Morrison
The United States of Poetry compiled by Joshua Blum, Bob Holman, and Mark Pellington
Stone Bench in an Empty Park selected by Paul B. Janeczko [American haiku poems in town/city settings]
Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Life, Love, and Victory edited by Lori M. Carlson

Another place you can look for poetry books is in the fiction section. Many authors, especially authors who write for teen audiences, have written novels in verse. Ellen Hopkins and Sonya Sones are two of the authors who have each written several novels in verse, but there are more authors who have written in this format at least once. You can check out a blog post I wrote last year about Glimpse by Carol Lynch Williams, in which I included a list of other novels in verse.

And since we are no longer in the mists of prehistory but in the here and now, you also have plenty of websites available if you'd like to search for poems. In addition to the websites that I linked in the first paragraph of this post, here are a few more sites where you can find lots of good stuff:

Poetry 180 - This website (which is also available as a book) is a collection of poems selected by former Poet Laureate Billy Collins. It's designed for high school students to hear or read one poem per day during the 180 days of the average school year.

Classical Poems from Passions in Poetry - The Passions in Poetry website features more than just classic stuff (you can explore the site to find modern poems divided by subjects like love, sadness, and friendship). But I wanted to highlight the classic section because that's where you can find poems from authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Lewis Carroll, and Emily Dickinson. One advantage if you're looking for shorter (pocket-sized) poems is that next to the title of each poem there's a listing for "size." The lower numbers will give you smaller poems, so this can definitely save you some time in your search.

The Poetry Archive - Listen to poets reading their own work! This website features historic and contemporary recordings, so that you can hear poems the way their authors intended them to be read. Each poem appears as a sound file and in written form. There's also a special search option that you can use to limit your search to short poems.

Columbia Granger's World of Poetry - Accessible with your library card, this database contains 250,000 full text poems and 450,000 citations, as well as poetry commentary, poets' biographies, and literary glossary terms.

So... do you have a favorite poem, or a favorite book of poetry? And what poem will be in YOUR pocket on April 14th?

WOW: A Poetry Celebration

Alexandra Gomez, Central Collection Development — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:21:06 -0400

WOW @ The library: Celebrating a Centennial of Women’s Poetry

April is poetry month! What is poetry? Perhaps it is a garden of expressions blooming in the light of thoughtful thoughts, or wonderful words dancing to the rhythm of rhymes. Either way poetry may be interpreted, this short selection of poetic works written by and about women, including Pulitzer Prize winners, will transport you into a journey around the world from the past into the present to find the answer.

Ain't I a Woman: Classic Poetry by Women From Around the World By Illona Linthwaite Voices of great women poets around the world, such as Anna Akhmatova, Maya Angelou, Judith Kazantzis, Gabriela Mistral, Marge Piercy, Irina Ratushinskaya, and Alice Walker will take the reader through centuries of life stages, struggles, and achievements. Best Poems of the Brontë Sisters By Emily, Anne, and Charlotte Brontë

A selection of poems by this pivotal English literary family reflects their domestic life and perspectives in the Victorian time.

The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni, 1968-1998 By Virginia C. Fowler This medley of poems brings to light sentiments of love, community, and other matters of life. Early Grrrl: the Early Poems of Marge Piercy By Marge Piercy This compilation of the works of a remarkable American poet contains many of her previously unpublished poems. Exilě; Temps Morts: Selected Works By Theresa Hak Kyung Cha An autobiographical mixture of culture, language and identity.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, When the Rainbow is Enuf: a Choreopoem

By Ntozake Shange

Recently made into a movie, the book presents the voices of seven women in a series of 20 poems that portray the struggles endured by African-American women.

How to (un)cage a girl

By Francesca Lia Block

In her autobiographical journey from childhood to adulthood, the author shares inner reflections of self-discovery, as well as her experiences with the outside world, its wonders, afflictions, and the significance of our existence.

I Don't Want to Be Crazy

By Samantha Schutz

The author shares intense feelings ignited by significant life events throughout her high school and college years.

Late Wife: Poems

By Claudia Emerson

2006 Pulitzer Prize winner, Claudia Emerson, delves into the wonders of life and failing relationships leading to the rebirth of new ones.

Native Guard

By Natasha Trethewey

2007

Pulitzer Prize winner, Natasha Trethewey, intertwines sonnets with family life feelings, notable events in American history, and multiracial stories of her hometown.

A Poem of her Own: Voices of American Women Yesterday and Today

By Catherine Clinton

A selection of 25 poems by 25 notable poets of the world.

Versed

By Rae Armantrout

In her philosophical poetry, the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner, Rae Armantrout, explores transcendental feelings of life’s unfortunate events.

When Did I Stop Being 20 and Other Injustices: Selected Poems from Single to Mid-Life

By Judith Viorst

A humorous look at the different phases of life is told through the multi dimensional domain of poetry.

These and other titles in different formats are available at your local library.