Poetry bestsellers

Performed by Propaganda and featuring four exclusive original songs.

In this debut collection of essays and poetry, musician, speaker, and activist Propaganda inspires us to create a better, more equitable world.

“If we get to make the very cultures that shape who we are, then let us remake them in the best way possible.”

In this deep, challenging,...

The How

“A brilliant and beautiful work. The author invites a reader to join an internal dialogue. True, Daley-Ward targets a specific age group and gender, but I want to say, she got the attention of this male approaching seventy and held it. Many fine quips and quotes, but the chapters “Why We Write It Down” and “Not the End of the Day” stood out for me. Personable, warm, truthful and encouraging. And with a phrase to live by: “Only you know How.””

Doug, Bookstore1Sarasota

The instant #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller


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, the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet... Read more »

The New York Times bestselling debut book of poetry from Lana Del Rey, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass.

“Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is the title poem of the book and the first poem I wrote of many. Some of which came to me in their entirety, which I dictated and then typed out, and some that I worked laboriously picking apart each... Read more »

Beowulf: A New Translation

“Bro! This is not your English teacher's Beowulf. Maria Dahvana Headley's "radical new translation" takes the familiar story of man versus monster and turns it into something both completely new and also as timeless as the original. What happens when Beowulf is less hero and more party boy? Or when Grendel's mother isn't a monster but just a woman trying to avenge her son? Get it from libro.fm to experience this epic oral tale as it was meant to be (smoky mead hall sold separately).”

Anthony, Brilliant Books Audio

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a reclusive poet whose only friendships were carried out by letter. She wrote nearly 1800 poems in her life, but very few were published until after her death. In this volume the poems are presented in chronological order in their original form, unaltered by editorial revision. It offers a wide-angle view of...

Amanda Gorman’s powerful and historic poem “The Hill We Climb,” read at President Joe Biden’s inauguration

“Stunning.” —CNN 
“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... Read more »

Mary Oliver has published twenty-one volumes of poetry and six books of prose in the span of five decades, but she rarely performs her poetry in live readings. With At Blackwater Pond, Mary Oliver gives her audience what they've longed to hear: the poet's voice reading her own work. In this audio, she has recorded forty of her favorite poems,... Read more »

The Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of every man's journey through life. In the myths and legends that are retold here, the energy and poetry of Homer's original is captured in a bold, contemporary idiom, giving us an edition of The Odyssey that is a joy to listen to, worth savoring treasuring for its sheer lyrical mastery. This... Read more »

Black Girl, Call Home

“This collection. Have you ever closed a book and suddenly felt that all that you are, all that you've seen has somehow been made tangible through another's voice? Have you ever felt called in to let go, to be heard, and to be seen? That is what Mans has done here. I will forever hold onto the beautiful ways in which Jasmine pulls apart and gives life to the tiny variables which contribute to the formulation of one's blackness, queerness, and womanhood. ”

Deidre, WORD Bookstores

Since it was first published more than forty years ago, Robert Fitzgerald's prizewinning translation of Homer's battle epic has become a classic in its own right: a standard against which all other versions of The Iliad are compared. This definitive translation of Homer's epic is timeless in its authority and always fresh in its vivid rendering...

A Fortune For Your Disaster

“Pain. Peace. Power. A startlingly cohesive deep dive into grief and heartbreak and possibility that will sit with you through the hardest days and act at once as a mirror and window. This is one to sit with again and again, and revel in its interconnectedness. Beautifully narrated by the author.”

Britt, Second Star to the Right

Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across is read by Mary Lambert and includes original music exclusive to the audiobook.

Beautiful and brutally honest, Mary Lambert's poetry is a beacon to anyone who's ever been knocked down—and picked themselves up again. In verse that deals with sexual assault, mental illness, and body acceptance, Ms. Lambert emerges as...

The US edition of the bestselling The Poetry Pharmacy

A beautiful collection of curated poems each individually selected to provide hope, comfort, and inspiration—for all of life's most difficult moments

Sometimes only a poem will do. These poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice are tailored to those moments in life when we need them... Read more »

Goldenrod

“Maggie Smith is the kind of magician who can make a poem breathe and sing. Goldenrod leaves the reader feeling as though the poet has gently struck their heart with a mallet, sending vibrations echoing throughout them for a long time.”

Jennifer Wills Geraedts, Beagle and Wolf Books & Bindery

BBC Radio 4's Poetry Please is the longest-running broadcast of verse anywhere in the world. First aired in 1979, the programme, a request show which broadcasts to two million listeners a week, has become a unique record of best-loved poems over the decades since its inception.

The BBC has looked back through its rich archive of recordings to...

The most famous, beautiful and spiritually moving poems of the twentieth-century, read by the most famous poet. Historic recordings of the cream of Eliot’s poetry. It is always something of a revelation to listen to a poet reading his own words, and these recordings are no exception. Eliot clearly and evenly characterises and reveals the voices... Read more »

Homie

“In their third collection, Danez Smith shakes to life the parts of people that have gone to sleep waiting for this time in the world to be over. Those emotions that raise up too much anger or grief — all of them are alive again and seen and spoken for with utmost care and a tremendously welcome sense of humor. Pick this book up and carry it with you everywhere. It can be like a video game heart for you, and who doesn’t need an extra heart?”

Luis Lopez, Moon Palace Books

Make Me Rain

“I would not call myself a poetry reader, but there is something about Nikki Giovanni’s poetry that speaks to me so deeply. Sentimental and comforting, Make Me Rain covers a wide range of topics, from quilts and rising bread to the social change we so desperately need in our world. Giovanni’s wisdom and understanding once again prove why she is such a poetic powerhouse and leave the reader wanting to explore her past work again, too.”

Beth Seufer Buss, Bookmarks

We Want Our Bodies Back

“Lyrical poems that will spark a lot of emotion, and maybe even a call to action. This little book is incredibly powerful! Makes for a great listen on Libro.fm as well. ”

Amy, Bright Side Bookshop

The Death of Sitting Bear

“From Pulitzer Prize-winning author (House Made of Dawn in 1969), Oklahoma Centennial State Poet Laureate, and acclaimed artist N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) comes a new collection of more than 100 new and selected poems in The Death of Sitting Bear. Presented in three parts, some poems are quick tributes to natural phenomenon but made no less impactful for their brevity. Simple moments – the sound of fry bread sizzling in childhood – are exquisitely detailed. Complex questions about the nature of animals and humans and their meanings and representations to each other are explored. God, as an entity, as a spirit, as in nature, is called upon. Other pieces are long form poetic narratives, such as Part II, A Century of Impressions, which detail an era in “one hundred haiku/elemental exercise/to nourish the mind.” The titular poem, The Death of Sitting Bear, gives voice to the great man himself in stanzas of poetic prose, detailing Sitting Bull’s life and death as an elite Kaitsenko warrior. Firmly steeped in Kiowa heritage and indigenous oral storytelling traditions, Momaday breathes in the spirit of the Southwest and breathes out masterful imagery onto the page. The poems beg to be read aloud in order to savor the taste of the language, each word carefully chosen to evoke shape, sound, sight, feeling, and history with the weight of its intention: “a blackbird holds still/in the center of sight/and I cannot/look away."”

BrocheAroe, River Dog Book Co.

If They Come for Us

“Raw, but not unpolished. Dripping with sadness and honey. Rage beyond anger, a lesson in history and violence. A comprehensible example of otherness in America for those who haven’t experienced it; for those who don’t know they’re perpetuating it. An honest portrayal of a life shaped by governments’ omissions, of the lies of the self and others, and of waking to the daylight, the promise held in sunshine, and in finding one’s own voice, own words, own way of telling one’s own story.”

BrocheAroe, River Dog Book Co.

With her virtuoso translation, classicist and bestselling author Caroline Alexander brings to life Homer’s timeless epic of the Trojan War

Composed around 730 B.C., Homer’s Iliad recounts the events of a few momentous weeks in the protracted ten-year war between the invading Achaeans, or Greeks, and the Trojans in their besieged city of Ilion....

A book-length poem about how an American Indian writer can't bring himself to write about nature, but is forced to reckon with colonial-white stereotypes, manifest destiny, and his own identity as an young, queer, urban-dwelling poet.

Nature Poem follows Teebs—a young, queer, American Indian (or NDN) poet—who can't bring himself to write a... Read more »

A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land.

In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo...

Postcolonial Love Poem

“Pulitzer Prize-winning Postcolonial Love Poem will make you want Natalie Diaz to write a love poem about you. Here, she writes sensual lesbian poems and warm platonic ones, poems about water and basketball and things lost in translation. Her elegant poetry begs to be studied—add this stunner from a Mexican Mojave poet to your shelf, and eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

Mary, Raven Book Store

The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly nuanced and moving allegory of human redemption.

Dante Alighieri was born... Read more »

"Dazzling. . . . In glittering prose, Momaday recalls stories passed down through generations, illuminating the earth as a sacrosanct place of wonder and abundance. At once a celebration and a warning, Earth Keeper is an impassioned defense of all that our endangered planet stands to lose." — Esquire

A magnificent testament to the earth, from...

Composed towards the end of the first millennium, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf is one of the great Northern epics and a classic of European literature. In his new translation, Seamus Heaney has produced a work which is both true, line by line, to the original poem, and an expression, in its language and music, of something fundamental to his own...

One of the New Yorker’s Favorite Books from 2011—from the renowned translator of Rilke, Tao Te Ching, and Gilgamesh, a vivid new translation of Western civilization’s foundational epic: the Iliad.

One of The New Yorker’s Favorite Books of 2 011

Tolstoy called the Iliad a miracle; Goethe said that it always thrust him into a state of astonishment.... Read more »

"In classical Greece men called rhapsodes memorized and recited “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.” My own rhapsode is the English actor Dan Stevens, whom fans of “Downton Abbey” will know as Matthew Crawley. He’s been performing the Robert Fitzgerald translation, and no Hellene could do it better." — Wall Street Journal

Robert Fitzgerald's...

⭐ Winner of the inaugural Brooklyn Public Library Literary Award

⭐ Finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award

IRL is a sweaty, summertime poem composed like a long text message, rooted in the epic tradition of A.R. Ammons, ancient Kumeyaay Bird Songs, and Beyoncé’s visual albums. It follows Teebs, a reservation-born, queer NDN... Read more »

The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, the most intense of the riots comprising the nation’s Red Summer, has shaped the last century but is not widely discussed. In 1919, award-winning poet Eve L. Ewing explores the story of this event—which lasted eight days and resulted in thirty-eight deaths and almost 500 injuries—through poems recounting the... Read more »

“Ada Limón’s new collection is her best yet, a much needed shot of if not hope, then perseverance amidst much uncertainty.”—NPR

From National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Ada Limón comes The Carrying—her most powerful collection yet. Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious and brave poems, exploring with... Read more »

The follow-up to the internationally bestselling sensation The Lost Words, The Lost Spells is an audio treasure that evokes the magic of the everyday natural world.

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,...

Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place... Read more »

Following the success of At Blackwater Pond, this second audio reccording from bestselling poet Mary Oliver contains a selection of thirty-seven previously published poems and four new, read by the poet in her steady, magnetic voice. Oliver recites from the full range of her poetry—from her classic nature writing to her verses for her... Read more »

Dating to the ninth century BC, Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to  the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb Introduction... Read more »

The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional recreation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.

Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile,... Read more »

In 1855, Walt Whitman published, at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of twelve poems. Showing the influence of a uniquely American form of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, the writing is distinguished by an explosively innovative free-verse style and previously unmentionable subject matter. Exalting...

Clint Smith's debut poetry collection, Counting Descent, is a coming of age story that seeks to complicate our conception of lineage and tradition. Smith explores the cognitive dissonance that results from belonging to a community that unapologetically celebrates black humanity while living in a world that often renders blackness a caricature of... Read more »

Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.
 
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my... Read more »

Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award

Jericho Brown's daring 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:... Read more »

An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller

"If you want your breath to catch and your heart to stop, turn to Kate Baer."--Joanna Goddard, Cup of Jo

A stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships of being a woman in the world today, and the many roles we play - mother, partner, and friend.

“When life throws you a bag of...

Poetic Remedies for Troubled Times

“Timely, heartwarming, and brimming with tough love, this little volume is just what we all need. Zura Johnson’s narration is versatile and absolutely perfect. ”

Leah, Bards Alley

A powerful, timely, dazzling collection of sonnets from one of America's most acclaimed poets, Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award–winning author of Lighthead

In seventy poems bearing the same title, Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. Written during the first two hundred days of... Read more »

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... Read more »

Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Jeremy Irons's perceptive reading illuminates the poetry of T. S. Eliot in all its complexity. Major poems range from 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', through the post-war desolation of 'The Waste Land' and the spiritual struggle of 'Ash-Wednesday', to the enduring charm of 'Old Possum's Book of... Read more »

Started as an online multimedia project in 2007, I Wrote This For You became an acclaimed poetry collection of hauntingly beautiful words and emotion that's unique to each person who reads it. This never-before released audio edition is narrated by the author.

I Wrote This For You: Please Listen focuses on a different facet of life, love, loss,... Read more »

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Grammy Award–nominated, platinum-selling musician Halsey is heralded as one of the most compelling voices of her generation. In I Would Leave Me If I Could, she reveals never-before-heard poetry of longing, love, and the nuances of bipolar disorder.

In this intimate audio performance of her debut collection, Halsey bares... Read more »