Poetry
London: Hanover Gallery, 1971. Accordion-bound paperback artist's book; gouache drawings by William Scott reproduced as part of the 1970-1970 series A Girl Surveyed exhibited at the Hanover Gallery, March-April 1971; fifty copies were numbered and signed - this copy is not numbered or signed. Light smudges on covers; spine creased; interior clean and bright. G
"When an author's unmitigated brilliance shows up on every page, it's tempting to skip a description and just say, Read this! Such is the case with this breathlessly powerful, deceptively breezy book of poetry." --Booklist, Starred Review
In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'." It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared. Abdurraqib uses touchstones from the world outside--from Marvin Gaye to Nikola Tesla to his neighbor's dogs--to create a mirror, inside of which every angle presents a new possibility.
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-
All the Year Round contains 12 poems, one for each month, written by Riley, who was popularly known as the “Hoosier Poet." The poems focus on rustic subjects and are written in a 'countrified' dialect. This edition includes twelve beautiful color woodcuts by the American painter Gustave Baumann, one of the leading figures of the color woodcut revival in the United States.
White cloth over navy blue with gilt lettering on cover; some foxing on white cloth; corners bumped; covers lightly scuffed, some soiling and fading; endpapers lightly tanned and foxed; lightly foxed throughout; pages uncut; illustrations bright. G
St.-John Perse's great poem "Anabasis" was first published in France in 1924. It was translated six years later by T. S. Eliot for a British limited edition. After a leisurely fourteen-year percolation, it was brought out in America in 1938.
This first U.S. edition has a dust jacket in protective cover; 1" tear on rear cover; ink notes on rear cover; black cloth; endpapers tanned. G+/G
William B. Ewert, Publisher, Concord, NY, 1980. Limited edition, no. 48 of 176 copies, signed on colophon; string tied, wrappers. VG+
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+
New York: Grossman Publishers, 1968. Colophon: This facsimile of the Gehenna Press edition of Blake's Auguries of Innocence was printed for Grossman Publishers New York City at the Meriden Gravure Company, Meriden, Connecticut. The type is Bembo, the paper, Curtis Rag, the composition originally set by Harold McGrath at The Gehenna Press, Northampton, Massachusetts. The book is bound in Ingres Tumba over boards by H. Wolff Book Mfg. Co. in New York City. The whole designed by Leonard Baskin. In slipcase; book has protective wrapper; both book and slipcase in VG condition.
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
Laura Grace Weldon was the Ohio Poet of the Year in 2019 for this collection of nature filled poems. This collection casts an uncommonly bright glow. In clear language, these poems explore themes of connection and healing through subjects as unusual as cow pastures, dictionaries, to-do lists, and astrophysics. Beauty is revealed in what one reviewer calls "sacraments of the ordinary." Perfect for poetry lovers and those who haven't read a poem in years.
Winner, 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize
Finalist, 2015 National Book Award, poetry category
Finalist, 2015 NAACP Image Awards, poetry category Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away--loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it--that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard, those places where all--death, sorrow, loss--is converted into what might, with patience, nourish us.
"Sara Holbrook continually works miracles by giving substance to steam -- in these keepsake poems she is matriarch, mojo and mind-bender, guiding us toward insight with an unerring hindsight. It is not important whether you discover Sara through her electrifying performance work or through these gems of humor, heart and lyricism. What's important is that you discover her, this wondrous wordsmith, one of the reasons poetry has a pulse again." --Patricia Smith, Boston Globe Columnist, Four Time National Poetry Slam Champion
* 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 . . .
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.
Rita Dove's Collected Poems 1974-2004 showcases the wide-ranging diversity that earned her a Pulitzer Prize, the position of U.S. poet laureate, a National Humanities Medal, and a National Medal of Art. Gathering thirty years and seven books, this volume compiles Dove's fresh reflections on adolescence in The Yellow House on the Corner and her irreverent musings in Museum. She sets the moving love story of Thomas and Beulah against the backdrop of war, industrialization, and the civil right struggles. The multifaceted gems of Grace Notes, the exquisite reinvention of Greek myth in the sonnets of Mother Love, the troubling rapids of recent history in On the Bus with Rosa Parks, and the homage to America's kaleidoscopic cultural heritage in American Smooth all celebrate Dove's mastery of narrative context with lyrical finesse. With the "precise, singing lines" for which the Washington Post praised her, Dove "has created fresh configurations of the traditional and the experimental" (Poetry magazine).
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-
Finalist for the National Book Award - Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award - Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award - Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize - Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award - Winner of the National Jewish Book Award - Finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award - Finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize - Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection
Ilya Kaminsky's astonishing parable in poems asks us, What is silence?
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+
The Associated Publishers Inc, 1941, nod. Blue boards, library markings. Good-
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
"And I fell up --"
Irreverent poet, whimsical artist and bestselling author -- Shel Silverstein is back! "Falling Up," the brand-new collection of more than 140 Silverstein poems and drawings, is the long-awaited companion to the bestselling classics "Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "A Light in the Attic."
Poor Screamin' Millie is just one of the unforgettable characters in this wondrous new book. You also will meet Allison Beals and her 25 eels; Danny O'Dare the Dancin' Bear; the Human Balloon; Headphone Harold; and more!
So come, wander through the Nose Garden, ride the Little Horse, eat in the Strange Restaurant and let the magic of Shel Silverstein open your eyes and tickle your mind.
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
1st edition; pristine dust jacket in protective cover. Fine/Fine
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-
Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1930; designed and decorated by Elizabeth MacKinstry; no dj; decorated boards with black cloth spine; paper label on spine rubbed; head of spine pulled; some tanning to covers; illustrated endpapers; binding good; text and illustrations clean and bright. G
In this intimate collection, the beloved author of The Poisonwood Bible and more than a dozen other New York Times bestsellers, winner or finalist for the Pulitzer and countless other prizes, now trains her eye on the everyday and the metaphysical in poems that are smartly crafted, emotionally rich, and luminous.
In her second poetry collection, Barbara Kingsolver offers reflections on the practical, the spiritual, and the wild. She begins with "how to" poems addressing everyday matters such as being hopeful, married, divorced; shearing a sheep; praying to unreliable gods; doing nothing at all; and of course, flying. Next come rafts of poems about making peace (or not) with the complicated bonds of friendship and family, and making peace (or not) with death, in the many ways it finds us. Some poems reflect on the redemptive powers of art and poetry itself; others consider where everything begins.Closing the book are poems that celebrate natural wonders--birdsong and ghost-flowers, ruthless ants, clever shellfish, coral reefs, deadly deserts, and thousand-year-old beech trees--all speaking to the daring project of belonging to an untamed world beyond ourselves.
Altogether, these are poems about transcendence: finding breath and lightness in life and the everyday acts of living. It's all terribly easy and, as the title suggests, not entirely possible. Or at least, it is never quite finished.
"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
New York & London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1902; 31 illustrations in photogravure reproduced from the original designs of Gustave Dore; reprint of the original Moxon folio edition; Margaret Armstrong cover design in gilt on navy blue cloth; light shelf wear; corners lightly bumped; front hinge weak; text clean and bright. G
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
Privately published by The Phillips Exeter Academy Press, 1967; softcover with original glassine wrapper; inscribed by author on ffep. VG
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.
"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
"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
Since its publication in 2017, The Lost Words has enchanted readers with its poetry and illustrations of the natural world. Now, The Lost Spells, a book kindred in spirit and tone, continues to re-wild the lives of children and adults.
The Lost Spells evokes the wonder of everyday nature, conjuring up red foxes, birch trees, jackdaws, and more in poems and illustrations that flow between the pages and into readers' minds. Robert Macfarlane's spell-poems and Jackie Morris's watercolour illustrations are musical and magical: these are summoning spells, words of recollection, charms of protection. To read The Lost Spells is to see anew the natural world within our grasp and to be reminded of what happens when we allow it to slip away.
A National Book Critics Circle Poetry Award Winner!
From the breakout author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé comes a profound and deceptively funny exploration of Black American womanhood.
"Morgan Parker's latest collection is a riveting testimony to everyday blackness . . . It is wry and atmospheric, an epic work of aural pleasures and personifications that demands to be read--both as an account of a private life and as searing political protest." --TIME Magazine
A Best Book of 2019 at TIME, Elle, BuzzFeed, the Star Tribune, AVClub, and more.
A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 at Vogue, O: the Oprah Magazine, NYLON, BuzzFeed, Publishers Weekly, and more.
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
1st printing; with woodcuts by J.J. Lankes; dust jacket in protective cover; top and bottom of spine torn; rear top edge has jagged tear; front top corner missing; forest green cloth over dark gray paper boards; title in gilt box on front cover; gilt lettering on spine; bookplate of former owner on pastedown; binding tight; deckled edges; 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
Nightwalker introduces poems by the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella. He was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1928, but didn't publish his work until 1956.
1st printing; signed; dust jacket in protective cover; spine edges lightly chipped; tan cloth; former owner's signature in ink on pastedown; pencil marks throughout. G/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
Iowa City: The Stone Wall Press, 1963. Limited edition, no. 105 of 220 copies; inscribed by author on ffep; no dj; brown paper with title/author on cream label on spine; top of covers and spine lightly faded; binding good; text clean and bright. VG
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."
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-
Dermot Healy’s poetry distills the essence of a gift he exercises more often and elaborately in other forms — for narrative, dialogue, characterization, and acute insight and observation. In The Reed Bed — set in and around his home on the ocean’s edge of Sligo, in London and further afield — he captures the everyday’s ordinary dramas and ‘small habits’, noting at the same time the hallway ‘where something is after happening’.
Moynagh Sullivan in the Irish Literary Supplement enthused about his poems’ ‘vigorous movement and the feel of dance and joyful noises’. Rough-edged and refreshing, The Reed Bed displays further instances of idiosyncratic comedy and convinces us of a singular capacity to be at once visionary, quirky and moving.
Gallery Books, 2001; 1st edition; signed by author. Dust jacket near fine; book like new. VG+/VG+
James Dickey (1923-1997) was widely regarded as one of the major mid-century American poets, known for his sweeping historical vision and eccentric poetic style. "Dickey himself dubbed his style, which blurred dreams and reality in an attempt to accommodate the irrational, 'country surrealism.' However, one of Dickey’s principal themes, usually expressed through direct confrontation or surreal juxtaposition of nature and civilization, was the need to intensify life by maintaining contact with the primitive impulses, sensations, and ways of seeing suppressed by modern society." [Poetry Foundation]
The Deerfield Press, Deerfield, MA, Gallery Press, Dublin, Ireland, 1980. Printed by Harold McGrath at Hampshire in Northampton, MA, and bound by Museum Bookbindings in Dublin, limited to 300 copies signed by author. With two color woodblock illustrations by Timothy Engelland. Additional inscription on title page by Dickey to Liz. F/F
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+
1st printing, March 1923. No dust jacket; original publisher's dark green cloth; gilt lettering and decoration on spine; corners bumped; original owner's signature in ink on ffep; endpapers smudged; front hinge weak; deckled edges. 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.
San Francisco: Paul Elder & Co., 1910. Sixteen hundred copies printed on Van Gelder hand-made paper, of which fifteen hundred for sale; this copy is no. 587. Decorative tan and gray with decorative paper label on front; spine chipped and starting to detach at bottom; top corner of front cover has small white stains; covers lightly soiled; gray endpapers unmarked; frontispiece portrait of poet with tissue guard; text clean and bright; some pages uncut. G+
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
Tony Hoagland captures the recognizably American landscape of a man of his generation: sex, friendship, rock and roll, cars, high optimism, and disillusion.
University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. Inscribed by author on title page; top edge of text slightly crimped. G+
Marianne Moore (1887-1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. Tell Me, Tell Me was a Finalist, National Book Awards 1967, for poetry.
New York: Viking Press, 1966. 1st edition. Inscribed by author on ffep; dust jacket in protective cover; edges lightly worn; turquoise cloth spine over gray marbled paper boards with MM embossed on front cover and silver lettering on spine; head of spine lightly scuffed; binding tight; text clean and bright. VG/VG
"Dynamic." --NPR
"Deeply rousing and uplifting." --Vogue
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. Her poem "The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country" can now be cherished in this special gift edition. Including an enduring foreword by Oprah Winfrey, this keepsake celebrates the promise of America and affirms the power of poetry.
Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award
"100 Notable Books of the Year," The New York Times Book Review
"By some literary magic--no, it's precision, and honesty--Brown manages to bestow upon even the most public of subjects the most intimate and personal stakes."--Craig Morgan Teicher, "'I Reject Walls': A 2019 Poetry Preview" for NPR
"A relentless dismantling of identity, a difficult jewel of a poem."--Rita Dove, in her introduction to Jericho Brown's "Dark" (featured in the New York Times Magazine in January 2019)
"Winner of a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Brown's hard-won lyricism finds fire (and idyll) in the intersection of politics and love for queer Black men."--O, The Oprah Magazine
Named a Lit Hub "Most Anticipated Book of 2019"
One of Buzzfeed's "66 Books Coming in 2019 You'll Want to Keep Your Eyes On"
The Rumpus poetry pick for "What to Read When 2019 is Just Around the Corner"
One of BookRiot's "50 Must-Read Poetry Collections of 2019"
Jericho Brown's daring new book The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Brown makes mythical pastorals to question the terrors to which we've become accustomed, and to celebrate how we survive. Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown's mastery, and his invention of the duplex--a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues--is testament to his formal skill. The Tradition is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while reveling in a celebration of contradiction.
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
A new volume of poetry from the New York Times bestselling and esteemed author of The Liar's Club and Lit.
Long before she earned accolades for her genre-defining memoirs, Mary Karr was winning poetry prizes. Now the beloved author returns with a collection of bracing poems as visceral and deeply felt and hilarious as her memoirs.
In Tropic of Squalor, Karr dares to address the numinous--that mystery some of us hope towards in secret, or maybe dare to pray to. The squalor of meaninglessness that every thoughtful person wrestles with sits at the core of human suffering, and Karr renders it with power--illness, death, love's agonized disappointments. Her brazen verse calls us out of our psychic swamplands and into that hard-won awareness of the divine hiding in the small moments that make us human. In a single poem she can generate tears, horror, empathy, laughter, and peace. She never preaches. But whether you're an adamant atheist, a pilgrim, or skeptically curious, these poems will urge you to find an inner light in the most baffling hours of darkness.
--The Millions
Bill Arthrell is a poet in Cleveland, Ohio. Inspired by the Maidan Revolution, he traveled to the Ukraine. The poetry of Ukrainian Heart expresses his amazement about those events and the Ukrainian nation. The poems are written in English and then translated to the Ukrainian.
Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize
Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection
The extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States
Even the men in black armor, the ones
Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else
Are they so buffered against, if not love's blade
Sizing up the heart's familiar meat?
We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat.
Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean.
Love: naked almost in the everlasting street,
Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze.
--from "Unrest in Baton Rouge"
In Wade in the Water, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America's contemporary moment both to our nation's fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith's signature voice--inquisitive, lyrical, and wry--turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence. Here, private utterance becomes part of a larger choral arrangement as the collection widens to include erasures of The Declaration of Independence and the correspondence between slave owners, a found poem comprised of evidence of corporate pollution and accounts of near-death experiences, a sequence of letters written by African Americans enlisted in the Civil War, and the survivors' reports of recent immigrants and refugees. Wade in the Water is a potent and luminous book by one of America's essential poets.
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.
"WE WANT OUR BODIES BACK URGES BLACK WOMEN TO DEMAND BETTER FROM MEN." -ESSENCE
"MASTER POET JESSICA CARE MOORE GIFTS US THIS LATEST COLLECTION OF SHARP, SMART AND DEFIANT PIECES." -MS. MAGAZINE
BOOKS BY BLACK WOMEN WE CAN'T WAIT TO READ IN 2020 -REFINERY29
A dazzling full-length collection of verse from one of the leading poets of our time.
Over the past two decades, jessica Care moore has become a cultural force as a poet, performer, publisher, activist, and critic. Reflecting her transcendent electric voice, this searing poetry collection is filled with moving, original stanzas that speak to both Black women's creative and intellectual power, and express the pain, sadness, and anger of those who suffer constant scrutiny because of their gender and race. Fierce and passionate, Jessica Care moore argues that Black women spend their lives building a physical and emotional shelter to protect themselves from misogyny, criminalization, hatred, stereotypes, sexual assault, objectification, patriarchy, and death threats.
We Want Our Bodies Back is an exploration--and defiant stance against--these many attacks.
--Patricia Smith, poet, playwright, author of Incendiary Art
This landmark anthology celebrates the indigenous peoples of North America, the first poets of this country, whose literary traditions stretch back centuries. Opening with a blessing from Pulitzer Prize-winner N. Scott Momaday, the book contains powerful introductions from contributing editors who represent the five geographically organized sections. Each section begins with a poem from traditional oral literatures and closes with emerging poets, ranging from Eleazar, a seventeenth-century Native student at Harvard, to Jake Skeets, a young Diné poet born in 1991, and including renowned writers such as Luci Tapahanso, Natalie Diaz, Layli Long Soldier, and Ray Young Bear. When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through offers the extraordinary sweep of Native literature, without which no study of American poetry is complete.