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Poetry

This guide is intended to direct library users to poetry within various genres.

Lang Leav

Love & Misadventure by Lang Leav

Love & Misadventure by Lang Leav

Beautifully illustrated and thoughtfully conceived, Love and Misadventure will take you on a rollercoaster ride through an ill-fated love affair from the initial butterflies through the soaring heights to the devastating plunge. And, in the end, the message is one of hope. The journey from love to heartbreak to finding love again is personal yet universal. Lang Leav's evocative poetry speaks to the soul of anyone who is on this journey. Leav has an unnerving ability to see inside the hearts and minds of her readers. Her talent for translating complex emotions with astonishing simplicity has won her a cult following of devoted fans from all over the world.

Lullabies by Lang Leav

Lullabies by Lang Leav

Set to a musical theme, love's poetic journey in this new, original collection begins with a Duet and travels through Interlude and Finale with an Encore popular piece from the best-selling Love & Misadventure. Lang Leav's evocative poetry speaks to the soul of anyone who is on this journey. Leav has an unnerving ability to see inside the hearts and minds of her readers. Her talent for translating complex emotions with astonishing simplicity has won her a cult following of devoted fans from all over the world. Lang Leav is a poet and internationally exhibiting artist.

The Universe of Us by Lang Leav

The Universe of Us by Lang Leav

Planets, stars, and constellations feature prominently in this beautiful, original poetry collection from Lang Leav. Inspired by the wonders of the universe, the best-selling poetess writes about love and loss, hope and hurt, being lost and found. Lang's poetry encompasses the breadth of emotions we all experience and evokes universal feelings with her skillfully crafted words.

Sea of Strangers by Lang Leav

Sea of Strangers by Lang Leav

This completely original collection of poetry and prose will not only delight her avid fans but is sure to capture the imagination of a whole new audience. With the turn of every page, Sea of Strangers invites you to go beyond love and loss to explore themes of self-discovery and empowerment as you navigate your way around the human heart.

Love Looks Pretty on You by Lang Leav

Love Looks Pretty on You by Lang Leav

Filled with wisdom and encouragement, every single page is a testament to the power of words, and the impact they can have on the relationships you build with others. And most importantly, the one you have with yourself. Lang Leav captures the intricacies of emotions like few others can. It's no wonder she has been recognized as a major influencer of the modern poetry movement and her writing has inspired a whole new generation of poets to pick up a pen. Love Looks Pretty on You is truly the must-have book for poetry lovers all over the world.

September Love by Lang Leav

September Love by Lang Leav

A book that will change the way you think about love, relationships, heartbreak, and self-empowerment. Breaking the rules, challenging perceptions, and exploring the secret desires we keep hidden from the world.
Beautifully composed and written by international bestselling author Lang Leav, this new collection of poetry and prose will positively influence your life. September Love captures the magic of each passing season, a pearl of wisdom waiting to be discovered with every page turned. A book that will inspire you to reach for the stars.

Amanda Gorman

The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman

The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman

On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe. Including an enduring foreword by Oprah Winfrey, this keepsake celebrates the promise of America and affirms the power of poetry.

Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman

Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman

Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, these poems shine a light on a moment of reckoning and reveal that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.

Rupi Kaur

The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur

The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur

Rupi Kaur's second collection of poetry. A vibrant and transcendent journey about growth and healing. Ancestry and honoring one{u2019}s roots. Expatriation and rising up to find a home within yourself. Divided into five chapters and illustrated by Kaur, the sun and her flowers is a journey of wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. A celebration of love in all its forms.

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

Now on audio! Rupi Kaur reads this, her bestselling collection of poetry and prose about survival, the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity.

Home Body by Rupi Kaur

Home Body by Rupi Kaur

Rupi Kaur constantly embraces growth, and in home body, she walks readers through a reflective and intimate journey visiting the past, the present, and the potential of the self. home body is a collection of raw, honest conversations with oneself - reminding readers to fill up on love, acceptance, community, family, and embrace change. Illustrated by the author, themes of nature and nurture, light and dark, rest here.

Darius Simpson

Never Catch Me by Darius Simpson

Never Catch Me by Darius Simpson

Darius Simpson's debut collection Never Catch Me centers on Black boyhood in the midwest and familial disintegration over time. Simpson pulls back the curtain, exposing the violence enacted against and upon, Black bodies, and yet, still, each poem is saturated in revolution and hope. Never Catch Me is the anthem necessary to organize a community that is committed to a better right now-one that can only be achieved with an intensity and action that goes far beyond the page.

Conversion Theory by Darius Simpson

Conversion Theory by Darius Simpson

Conversion Theory is the first-ever published poetry collection of Darius Simpson, award-winning spoken word artist, writer, and social justice activist. This book is a reflection of how Darius has come to experience the United States and its relation to direct action, culture, community, and creative work of African Americans. Since 2014, specifically the murder of Mike Brown and the rebellion that followed, there had been emphasis in media coverage on police brutality and the string of non-indictments which were never far behind. Conversion Theory highlights many of these injustices while intertwining simple truths of what it has always meant to be black in the U.S. With the use of personal stories, persona poems, and historical facts, Darius brings the ugly truths to light while encouraging us all to continue in our pursuit of “justice for all”. In some imaginative and some literal ways each poem stands as a demand in exchange for the peace which is so often stipulated on black brown voices of dissent.

Sylvia Plath

Ariel by Sylvia Plath

Ariel by Sylvia Plath

An acclaimed anthology of vivid and emotionally shattering poems, written during the last months of Plath's short life, is accompanied by a brief author profile and an incisive foreword by Robert Lowell.

Ariel: The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath

Ariel: The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath

Seeking to restore the selection and arrangement originally intended by Plath at the time of her death, this edition of her final works features a facsimile of her complete working drafts of the title poem provided to offer insight into her creative process.

Crossing the Water by Sylvia Plath

Crossing the Water by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's extraordinary collection pushes the envelope between dark and light, between our deep passions and desires that are often in tension with our duty to family and society. Water becomes a metaphor for the surface veneer that many of us carry, but Plath explores how easily this surface can be shaken and disturbed.

The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath

The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath

By the time of her death on 11, February 1963, Sylvia Plath had written a large bulk of poetry. To my knowledge, she never scrapped any of her poetic efforts. With one or two exceptions, she brought every piece she worked on to some final form acceptable to her, rejecting at most the odd verse, or a false head or a false tail. Her attitude to her verse was artisan-like: if she couldn’t get a table out of the material, she was quite happy to get a chair, or even a toy. The end product for her was not so much a successful poem, as something that had temporarily exhausted her ingenuity. So this book contains not merely what verse she saved, but—after 1956—all she wrote. — Ted Hughes, from the Introduction

A Rare Recording of Sylvia Plath Reading Her Best Poems

A Rare Recording of Sylvia Plath Reading Her Best Poems

Sylvia Plath born on October 27, 1932, in Boston, MA, was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), and also The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide on February 11, 1963. In this recording, Plath reads "Tulips," "Poppies In October," "Daddy," "Ariel," "Lady Lazarus," and "The Applicant."

The Voice of the Poet: Sylvia Plath

The Voice of the Poet: Sylvia Plath

A remarkable new series of audiobooks, featuring the most distinquished twentieth-century American poets reading from their own work. A first in audiobook publishing--a series that uses the written word to enhance the listening experience--poetry to be read as well as heard. Each audiobook includes rare archival recordings on cassette and a book with the text of the poetry, a bibliography, and a commentary by J. D. McClatchy, the poet and critic, who is the editor of The Yale Review.

Winter Trees by Sylvia Plath

Winter Trees by Sylvia Plath

The poems in Winter Trees were written in the last nine months of Sylvia Plath’s life, and form part of the group from which the Ariel poems were chosen. They reveal the poet at the height of her creative powers, exhibiting the startling imagery and dramatic play for which she became known. Published posthumously in 1971, this valuable collection finds its place alongside The Colossus and Ariel in the oeuvre of a singular talent.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar

(Audio Book) Presents the American poet's semi-autobiographical account of Esther Greenwood, a talented writer who struggles for intimacy and meaning in her artist life.

Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath

Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath

Nineteen of Plath's surviving stories, the earliest dating from 1952, are joined by five of her best pieces of journalism and selected excerpts from her diaries

Mary Ventura and The Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath

Mary Ventura and The Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath

Never before published, this newly discovered story by literary legend Sylvia Plath stands on its own and is remarkable for its symbolic, allegorical approach to a young woman's rebellion against convention and forceful taking control of her own life. Written while Sylvia Plath was a student at Smith College in 1952, Mary Ventura and The Ninth Kingdom tells the story of a young woman's fateful train journey. Lips the color of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like "guilt, and guilt, and guilt": these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom. "But what is the ninth kingdom?" she asks a kind-seeming lady in her carriage. "It is the kingdom of the frozen will," comes the reply. "There is no going back." Sylvia Plath's strange, dark tale of female agency and independence, written not long after she herself left home, grapples with mortality in motion.

The Journals of Sylvia Plath

The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath began keeping a diary as a young child. By the time she was at Smith College, when this book begins, she had settled into a nearly daily routine with her journal, which was also a sourcebook for her writing. Plath once called her journal her “Sargasso,” her repository of imagination, “a litany of dreams, directives, and imperatives,” and in fact these pages contain the germs of most of her work. Plath’s ambitions as a writer were urgent and ultimately all-consuming, requiring of her a heat, a fantastic chaos, even a violence that burned straight through her. The intensity of this struggle is rendered in her journal with an unsparing clarity, revealing both the frequent desperation of her situation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons.

  The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons.

Letters Home by Sylvia Plath

Letters Home by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath's correspondence, addressed chiefly to her mother, from her time at Smith College in the early 1950s up to her suicide in London in February 1963. In addition to her capacity for domestic and writerly happiness, these letters also hint at her potential for deep despair.