Poetry

Aard-vark to Axolotl, an eclectic series of tiny essays, is a collection of prose poems disguised as imaginary definitions, and a collaboration of text + image based on a set of illustrations from an old dictionary. Sometimes sneaky mysterious, sometimes downright weird, these small stories work on the reader like alternative definitions for items drawn from a cabinet of curiosities.

W. H. Auden's last, longest, and most ambitious book-length poem won the Pulitzer Prize and inspired a symphony by Leonard Bernstein as well as a ballet by Jerome Robbins.

New York: Random House, 1947. 1st printing. Dust jacket in protective mylar cover; 1/2" at top of spine missing; 1" tear at top left cover; corners chipped; front cover has some soiling in spots; dark green cloth with gilt lettering over maroon on spine; first 8 pages creased at top left; binding tight. G/G-

In this stunning collection, Joy Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where the Mvskoke people, including her own ancestors, were forcibly displaced. From her memory of her mother's death, to her beginnings in the Native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo's personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings.

Lord John Press, Northridge, California, 1981. First edition limited to 300 numbered copies and 50 deluxe copies, all signed by each poet. This book is a presentation copy and is not numbered. Blue cloth spine lettered in glit, boards blue with overall gilt decorations.  VG+

 

Published by The Gehenna Press, Northampton, Mass., 1965. Limited edition, no. 293/500. Drawings by Leonard Baskin. Dust jacket in protective cover; spine and eges tanned; 1/2" at head of spine chipped away; covers lightly soiled; green cloth with gilt lettering on spine; binding tight; text clean and bright; page from The Massachusetts Review, volume 1, no. 2, February 1960, containing two poems by author laid in. VG/G

Love resides within all of earth and knows no limits. It is an entity that holds those within its reach captive. To be enraptured by love is to surrender all sensibility. In Blackheart Hideaway, M. Lauren explores the depths, darkness and overwhelming insatiability of love through poetry, prose and short stories. Whether it be the betrayal of a lover in "Telling Him," the indisputable answer to "Love's Call" or the hope & promise of newfound love, Blackheart Hideaway explores and endures it all.

* Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry *
* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism * Winner of the NAACP Image Award * Winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize * Winner of the PEN Open Book Award *

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
The New Yorker, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, NPR. Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, Slate, Time Out New York, Vulture, Refinery 29, and many more . . .

A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine's long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric.

Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named post-race society.

New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1913. 1st edition. No dust jacket; blue cloth with gilt lettering on cover and spine; t.e.g.; edges worn; corners bumped; covers scuffed; frontispiece with sepia portrait of poet; title page has shadow of portrait; hinges weak. G-

A new book of poetry from internationally acclaimed, award-winning and bestselling author Margaret Atwood

In Dearly, Margaret Atwood's first collection of poetry in over a decade, Atwood addresses themes such as love, loss, the passage of time, the nature of nature and - zombies. Her new poetry is introspective and personal in tone, but wide-ranging in topic. In poem after poem, she casts her unique imagination and unyielding, observant eye over the landscape of a life carefully and intuitively lived.

While many are familiar with Margaret Atwood's fiction--including her groundbreaking and bestselling novels The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments, Oryx and Crake, among others--she has, from the beginning of her career, been one of our most significant contemporary poets. And she is one of the very few writers equally accomplished in fiction and poetry. This collection is a stunning achievement that will be appreciated by fans of her novels and poetry readers alike.

Two hundred copies of this privately published collection of romantic verse by Ralph Pulitzer (1879-1939), writing under the pseudonym John Burke, were printed and bound by Pynson Printers in 1927. This gorgeous volume is no. 164/200 and is signed by Rockwell Kent; quarter brown morocco over marbled boards; morocco corners; some wear to spine; corners bumped and scuffed; decorated endpapers; former owner's bookplate on front pastedown; owner's sticker on rear pastedown; deckled edges; binding tight; text clean and bright. G+

Vincent Starrett (1886-1974) was a book collector, author, bibliographer, and a Sherlock Holmes scholar. He has been referred to as part of Chicago's "literary renaissance” and has written or edited more than 50 books of essays, criticism, fiction, biography, poetry, and bibliography. Ebony Flame, published in 1922, was Starrett's first published collection of poetry.

Chicago: Covici-McGee, 1922. Limited edition, numbered copy, no. 331/350, signed by author. No dust jacket; black cloth spine with paper label; decorated paper boards; top edge toned with age; spine head frayed; decorated endpapers; binding good; text clean. G

Even the Stars Look Lonesome is Maya Angelou talking of the things she cares about most. In her unique, spellbinding way, she re-creates intimate personal experiences and gives us her wisdom on a wide variety of subjects. She tells us how a house can both hurt its occupants and heal them. She talks about Africa. She gives us a profile of Oprah. She enlightens us about age and sexuality. She confesses to the problems fame brings and shares with us the indelible lessons she has learned about rage and violence. And she sings the praises of sensuality.

Description from the flap: "Freshness and vitality, a poignant understanding of the human heart in love, distinguish this new volume of sonnets by one of America's most popular and most distinguished poets. Extraordinary richness of emotion, a depth of thought and feeling place it among the finest collections in modern English poetry. The reader feels that here is an unconquerable personality, a heart which faces life with an untiring eagerness to taste all of its sorrows and all of its joys. In this sonnet sequence Miss Millay demonstrates her mastery of rhyme and rhythm, bringing to the classic form a color and a splendor all her own. This is a book which no lover of poetry should miss."

New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1931. First edition. Dust jacket in protective cover; head of spine and top rear edge chipped with some small tears; top front corner chipped; edges toned; spine toned; black cloth spine and corners over brown paper boards with title and author on paper label on spine; binding tight; text clean. VG/G

New York: Random House, 1944. 1st printing.

One Volume contains two of Auden's long poems: "For the Time Being - A Christmas Oratorio" and "The Sea and the Mirror - A Commentary of Shakespeare's The Tempest." Previous owner has laid in "Christmas 1958" poem by Auden.

Dust jacket in protective cover; small tears at head and heel of spine; corners chipped; navy blue paper over white cloth; gilt lettering on spine; endpapers tanned; signature of former owner in ink on pastedown; bleed-through of glue from repair between pages 3-6;  G/G-

The collection in the words of the author: "There are never just one or two sides to any story, but dozens. This book is the culmination of thousands of conversations with folks who took the time to tell me their sides. I took a lot of notes and have revised, revisited, and robbed this manuscript over the last 20 years."

The breakout poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman

Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, Amanda Gorman's remarkable new collection reveals an energizing and unforgettable voice in American poetry. Call Us What We Carry is Gorman at her finest. Including "The Hill We Climb," the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, and bursting with musical language and exploring themes of identity, grief, and memory, this lyric of hope and healing captures an important moment in our country's consciousness while being utterly timeless.

The poems in How to Live in Ruins tell one couple's story of moving to Cleveland and raising a family there. This is a book for anyone who has ever loved a place that's a little bit rusty and tried to make it better.

Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS's American Masters.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother's side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age--and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors ("I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare") will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity."--James Baldwin

 

“If It Heals At All defines personal moments that conjure reincarnations of straightforward sensibility with language that names, ‘my black is a heartbeat.’ Ali Black dares metaphors to not get it twisted as she creates a universe fresh with imagery that paints the audacity of reclaimed narratives with such brilliance as ‘mouth as a disorder.’

 

This collection is searing poetry that will not allow us to forget the unknown grief buried inside of boundless pleasure. If It Heals At All traces the slim boundaries between life and death, blundered justice, and the boldness of Black love reimagined.” - Jaki Shelton Green

 

Not only was Frank O'Hara (1926-1966) one of the most important American poets of his generation, he was also intimately involved with the art world of the 1950s and 1960s, a time when New York had become the cultural capital of the world. As an associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara organized a series of important exhibitions, notably of the work of Franz Kline and of Robert Motherwell. In Memory of My Feelings explores this key period in modern art by presenting artists who were associated with O'Hara and whose seminal works are reflected in his poetry.

Limited edition, number 981/2500; published by Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1967; 30 poems illustrated by 30 artists, on gathered sheets in portfolio and slipcase as issued; top of slipcase soiled; front and top of slipcase lightly foxed; light foxing on cloth edge of front cover; inside is clean and bright. G+/G

A gardener tends her vegetables and flowers while devising a way to manage her burgeoning chipmunk problem. A daughter pens a letter to her dead father. Jesus saunters into hot yoga and dazzles the assembled practitioners. Three sisters play on their swing set in the middle of the night. In these-and other-poems from Just the Girls: A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies; A Drift of Honeybees, women support, cheer, challenge, and, ultimately, sustain each other. Just the Girls celebrates women and what it means to be connected to the female whole.

Advance Praise:

"Just the Girls is a poetic celebration of female friendship. In brilliantly created portraits of a family of sisters, aunts, mothers, and daughters, Anderson gives us a close look at the many ways in which women matter to each other." Maggie Anderson, author of Dear All,
"We're in the presence of a poet with an ear for how language shapes our worlds, and an eye alert to the details that make those worlds real to us. What a splendid, moving collection of lyrics!" Dr. Steven Reese, authorExcentrica: Notes on the Text

"Pam Anderson's work is smart, sensitive, and at times wonderfully wry." Thomas Dukes, poet and author
"Anderson gives our everyday lives a voice that is rich and cuts to the quick. She has a gift for articulating the beauties and mysteries of our lives in poetry that will leave you wanting more." Diane Laney Fitzpatrick, author and social media strategist
"These poems are a poignant catalog of what we learn from girls and women, inspiration and cautionary tale, and our complicated memories of domestic life." Karen Schubert, author of The Compost Reader

Mary Quade, our lady of broken birds with still beating hearts, of the haunts within a covered bridge, is in love with things (empty dresses, sticks and branches, county fair food), with animals (a sick raccoon, moles, the last passenger pigeon), and because she is in love, she is both fiercely curious and deeply wary. These poems of great, imaginative empathy are sharpened with the understanding that, really, we are so greedy, "all unclean, all appetite." -- Katie Northrop

One of Mary Quade's poems, making an analogy with photographic depth of field, begins by observing that "The smaller the window / the more you will see / clearly." The whole of Local Extinctions, from the birthday party magician in the first poem to the American Legion pancakes at the county fair in the last, embraces that principle as an ideal. The infinite care Mary Quade takes in framing and focus results every time in perfect clarity, each poem revealing something that only Quade could show us, as only she could show it. -- H. L. Hix

One of America's most celebrated poets challenges us with this powerful and deeply personal collection of verse that speaks to the injustices of society while illuminating the depths of her own heart.

For more than thirty years, Nikki Giovanni's poetry has inspired, enlightened, and dazzled readers. As sharp and outspoken as ever, this artist long hailed as a healer and a sage returns with this profound book of poetry in which she continues to call attention to injustice and give readers an unfiltered look into the most private parts of herself.

In Make Me Rain, she celebrates her loved ones and unapologetically declares her pride in her black heritage, while exploring the enduring impact of the twin sins of racism and white nationalism. Giovanni reaffirms her place as a uniquely vibrant and relevant American voice with poems such as "I Come from Athletes" and "Rainy Days"--calling out segregation and Donald Trump; as well as "Unloved (for Aunt Cleota)" and ""When I Could No Longer"--her personal elegy for the relatives who saved her from an abusive home life.

Stirring, provocative, and resonant, the poems in Make Me Rain pierce the heart and nourish the soul.

With its defiance for any one tradition or voice, Thomas Sayers Ellis's debut becomes a powerful argument against monotony

A dream. A democracy. A savage liberty.
And yet another anthem and yet another heaven
and yet another party wants you.
Wants you wants you wants you.
--from "Groovallegiance"

In one poem, Thomas Sayers Ellis prognosticates, "Pretty soon, the Age of the Talk Show / Will slip on a peel left in the avant- gutter." The result is The Maverick Room, the testing ground of determination and serendipity, where call-and-response becomes Steinian echo becomes Post-Soul percussive pleasure becomes a bootlegged recording hustled out of a D.C. go-go club.

From the cover: "A selection from the last poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, poems which she at the time of her death was preparing for publication, together with a few unpublished poems from an earlier period."

Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1954. 1st edition. Dust jacket in protective cover; edges chipped and creased with some small tears; price clipped; black cloth spine over blue paper boards with gilt lettering on spine; edges toned; endpapers have areas of tanning; binding tight; text clean. G+/G

The Dolmen Press, 1967. Limited edition; The New Dolmen Chapbooks, 2; published in the U.S. by Dufour Editions, Chester Springs, PA. Sewn in card covers with attached dust jacket; covers rubbed and soiled; bottom of front flap clipped; former owner's name in ink on inside cover. G

Cats! Some are sane, and some are mad.
Some are good, and some are bad . . .

These lovable cat poems were written by T. S. Eliot for his godchildren and continue to delight children and grown-ups. Eliot's beloved cat poems are a curious and artful homage to felines young and old, merry and fierce, small and unmistakably round.

Yellow cloth with red figures and printing, dusty yellow dj with black drawings and print, chips at top of spine and some darkening.  G/G

Over the past decade, Billy Collins has emerged as the most beloved American poet since Robert Frost, garnering critical acclaim and broad popular appeal. Annie Proulx admits, "I have never before felt possessive about a poet, but I am fiercely glad that Billy Collins is ours." John Updike proclaims his poems "consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides."

Picnic, Lightning--one of the books that helped establish and secure Collins' reputation and popularity during the 1990s--combines humor and seriousness, wit and sublimity. His poems touch on a wide range of subjects, from jazz to death, from weather to sex, but share common ground where the mind and heart can meet. Whether reading him for the first time or the fiftieth, this signed copy is a must-have for anyone interested in the poet the New York Times calls simply "the real thing."

WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY

FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY

Natalie Diaz's highly anticipated follow-up to When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book Award

Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz's brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages--bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers--be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: "Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden." In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality.

Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves: "I am doing my best to not become a museum / of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out. // I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible." Postcolonial Love Poem unravels notions of American goodness and creates something more powerful than hope--in it, a future is built, future being a matrix of the choices we make now, and in these poems, Diaz chooses love.

Doubleday, Page & Co., 1925; 1st edition; dust jacket in protective cover; dust jacket tattered with tears, chips, and discolorations; decorated boards with black cloth spine; edges worn; illustrated endpapers; hinges weak; gutter exposed between pp. 36-37 and pp. 52-53; text clean; illustrations bright. G/G-

In his newest collection, Robert Schumann is Mad Again, Norman Dubie explores human suffering in a narrative unlimited by time and space. From the fields of a fallen Jerusalem, to the sci-fi prison of the Ukraine's Crater Lviv, Dubie has crafted a kaleidoscope of reserved places and experiences throughout history. His ekphrastic work, a continual expansion of a legacy seeking to test "the limits of the lyric," spirals across the boundaries of nonfiction and the surreal, the artistic and the scientific. Norman Dubie reconciles the violence of cobbled streets and abandoned houses with the mysterious hum of the arts, "singing to nearly/ everyone who will listen." This collection pays homage to the voices of classic writers, artists, and scientists, where the likes of Francisco Goya, Paolo Uccello, and the collection's namesake evaluate this unnerving world, suspended in balanced chaos. Simultaneously solemn and experimental, Dubie's latest poems embrace his anxieties of aging and death, capturing a haunting sense of wonder that lingers like a cold touch and draws compassion for humanity's future.

Want to spread some cheer and love? Feeling the need for a little bit of joy in your life? Look no further than Rx Poetry, written by Mimi Plevin-Foust! Comes in poptop prescription bottle. Please mention which type of poetry you seek in the comments: health, joy, or love

Spring will marry you. A promise!

Cuckoo brings the message: May.

O new clothes! O get your house ready!

Expectation keeps you starry.

But at which church and on what day?

In these poems Ted Hughes invites the reader to try and catch the spring (but she's elusive); to take a closer look at the March calf; to listen to the happiness of the summer grass; and to notice the 'weak-neck snowdrops' in winter. Earth is revealed in all its surprising richness and rawness, and so is humankind's own constantly changing relationship with the seasons.

Iillustrated with gorgeous paintings by Leonard Baskin; 1st edition; dust jacket in protective cover; two small tears along top of front cover; green cloth over olive boards; title embossed on front; gilt lettering on spine; evidence of tape at top of front pastedown; binding tight; text clean and bright. G+/G+

Adrienne Rich was the singular voice of her generation, bringing discussions of gender, race, and class to the forefront of poetical discourse. This generous selection from all nineteen of Rich's published poetry volumes encompasses her best-known work--the clear-sighted and passionate feminist poems of the 1970s, including "Diving into the Wreck," "Planetarium," and "The Phenomenology of Anger"--and offers the full range of her evolution as a poet. From poems leading up to her feminist breakthrough through bold later work such as "North American Time" and "Calle Visión," Selected Poems celebrates Rich's prophetic vision as well as the inventiveness that shaped her enduring art.

Sweeney Astray is Seamus Heaney's version of the medieval Irish work Buile Suibne. Its hero, Mad Sweeney, undergoes a series of purgatorial adventures after he is cursed by a saint and turned into a bird at the Battle of Moira. Heaney's translation not only restores to us a work of historical and literary importance but offers the genius of one of our greatest living poets to reinforce its claims on the reader of contemporary literature.

1st U.S. edition; dust jacket in protective mylar cover; previous owner signature on front pastedown; two lines of ink underlining on page iii of the introduction. G/VG

Liveright Inc, NY, 1932, First Edition.  No dust jacket; black cloth over pale pink paper; cover soiled; 2 short tears at top of spine; gilt decoration on front cover; interior clean, unmarked and tight. G

Focusing on contemporary issues, this text showcases a large collection of regional poets laureate writing on subjects critical to understanding social justice as it relates to the Great Lakes region. Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice includes writing by seventy-eight poets who truly represent the diversity of the Great Lakes region, including Rita Dove, Marvin Bell, Crystal Valentine, Kimberly Blaeser, Mary Weems, Karen Kovacik, Wendy Vardaman, Zora Howard, Carla Christopher, Meredith Holmes, Karla Huston, Joyce Sutphen, and Laren McClung, among others. City, state, and national poets laureate with ties to Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin appear in these pages, organized around themes from the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide," calling on readers to act on behalf of victims of social injustice.

Quartez Harris is the author of the debut full-length poetry collection We Made It To School Alive, published by Twelve Arts Press. The collection eloquently centers the humanity of students of color while revealing how they establish self-worth and optimism in spite of a backdrop of structural barriers.

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.

The dying of a beloved wife and fellow poet makes for a bleak and lonely tale. But Donald Hall's poignant and courageous poetry, facing that dread fact, involves us all: the magnificent, humorous, and gifted woman, Jane Kenyon, who suffered and died; the doctors and nurses who tried but failed to save her; the neighbors, friends, and relatives who grieved for her; the husband who sat by her while she lived and afterward sat in their house alone with his pain, self-pity, and fury; and those of us who until now had nothing to do with it.