Poetry bestsellers

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 »

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

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

"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...

From one of the most-viewed spoken word poets of all time, a collection exploring loneliness, anxiety, and longing—and finding peace, and even joy, in unexpected places

Sabrina Benaim, author of Depression & Other Magic Tricks, has connected deeply with readers and reached millions of viewers through her poetry, breaking down the stigma... Read more »

Robert Pinsky's new verse translation of the Inferno makes it clear to the contemporary listener, as no other in English has done, why Dante is universally considered a poet of great power, intensity, and strength. This critically acclaimed translation was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry and the Harold Morton Landon... Read more »

A brilliantly original debut about a love affair cut short, and how lonely it is to live inside a secret -- for fans of Sally Rooney, Sheila Heti, and Ottessa Moshfegh.
Ana Kelly can deal with death. As an estate lawyer, an unfortunate part of her day-to-day is phone calls from the next of kin informing her that one of her clients has died. But... Read more »

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 »

If you enjoyed Beowulf, then you’ll love Beowulf: A New Translation.

“Maria Dahvana Headley has created a truly fresh, simultaneously current & ancient, engaging translation of this thousand-year-old hero tale. She's taken great risks as a translator, daring to use the most contemporary language in order to give 21st century readers the same experience of the poem's original audience - hearing the story unfold in the words they used every day.

Every translation is a series of a million branching choices about vocabulary, rhythms, rhyme, syntax, tone, echoes, and more. Headley's intro invites us into her decision process, such as using "Bro!" as the marker for when the narrator is starting new sections, and refusing to translate the description of Grendel's mother as "monstrous" when the text may not support that, despite hundreds of years of male translators who have insisted upon it.

At its heart, "Beowulf" isn't an Official Literary Masterpiece or Series of Puzzles for a PH.D. - it's an around-the-campfire hero and monsters story, told to give shivers, teach listeners what good leadership should look like, and entertain. The summer of 2020 is certainly in need all of these attributes in a story - pop in your earbuds and sink into this tale.”

Elliott, Big Blue Marble Bookstore

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,...

Milk and Honey

“I want to be someone who gets poetry, but I don’t always. I’d been meaning to try this one, though, since it’s been selling like the proverbial hot cakes — presumably also to people who aren’t really usually into poetry. When I was browsing at Green Apple Books in San Francisco, it jumped out at me, and I sat in the hipster café down the road and started reading. The poetry collection is in four parts — the hurting, the loving, the breaking, the healing — and I expected to just read one of the parts, but once I’d started I couldn’t stop. Some of these poems, often the shortest ones, which are just two or three lines long, blew me away and put words to feelings I’m always trying to write about. I’m excited to see what Rupi Kaur does next.”

Claire, East City Bookshop

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

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 »

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...

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 »

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

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 »

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 »

A beautifully illustrated book from Cleo Wade—the artist, poet, and speaker who has been called “the Millennial Oprah” by New York magazine—that offers creative inspiration and life lessons through poetry, mantras, and affirmations, perfect for fans of the bestseller Milk & Honey.

True to her hugely popular Instagram account, Cleo Wade brings... Read more »

Volume One of the definitive collection of Seamus Heaney reading his own work, recorded in 2009 by RTE. Volume One contains four collections published between 1966 and 1975: Death of a Naturalist, Door into the Dark, Wintering Out and North. 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 »

Following the success of his New York Times bestseller Dumpty, award-winning actor, author, and illustrator John Lithgow presents a brand-new collection of satirical poems chronicling the despotic age of Donald Trump.

Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown is darker and more hard-hitting than ever. Lithgow writes and draws with wit and fury as he takes... Read more »

Volume Two of the definitive collection of Seamus Heaney reading his own work, recorded in 2009 by RTE. Volume Two contains four collections published between 1979 and 1991: Field Work, Station Island, The Haw Lantern and Seeing Things. Read more »

New York Times Bestseller!

Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse is a satirical poetry collection from award-winning actor and bestselling author John Lithgow. Chronicling the last few raucous years in American politics, Lithgow takes readers verse by verse through the history of Donald Trump's presidency.

• Lampoons the likes of Betsy DeVos, William... Read more »

New Hampshire is a collection of poems by Robert Frost first published in 1923 by Henry Holt. It contains a number of his best known poems, including "Fire and Ice", "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Nothing Gold Can Stay", and “For Once, Then, Something”. The collection is organized into three sections: the poem “New Hampshire”, a group... Read more »

This compelling collection spans Yeats's career: from the poems of his early years, which display his interest in Irish myths and his hopeless passion for Irish patriot Maud Gonne, to the soaring, majestic poems of his old age. Works of precision, economy and sensuous, lyrical beauty, they include "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "The Wild Swans at... Read more »

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.

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

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 »

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 »

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...

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 Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a... Read more »

A Fortune For Your Disaster

“Hanif Abdurraquib’s powerful collection of poems explores the unending heartbreak of being black in America and how to find strength and self-actualization. Landscaped by graves, mirrors, and music these poems take the personal grief of being barked at by dogs and frames and re-frames those aggression into explorations on how our nation’s history and ceaseless failures cannot stamp our indelible humanity. The series of poems titled “How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This” are defiant manifestos that will be talked about for years to come.”

Luis, Avid Bookshop

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 »

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....

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.

A musical, magical, resilient volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States

In these poems, the joys and struggles of the everyday are played against the grinding politics of being human. Beginning in a hotel room in the dark of a distant city, we travel through history and follow the memory of the Trail of Tears from...

In 81 brief chapters, Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, provides advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit, and teaches us how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao—the basic principle of the universe.

Stephen Mitchell's bestselling version has been...

How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)

“Kingsolver writes poetry that is both accessible and profound. This is the kind of collection you’ll loan out to a friend or relative and never get back. You should probably go ahead and buy two or three all at once!”

Pat Cawiezell, Magic City Books

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 »

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...

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 »

“Earth Keeper is a prayer for continuity in these days of uncertainty. I cannot tell you why I loved this book, I can only tell you I wept my way through it. Each page brought me closer to myself, a self I had lost in the pandemic. We need Scott Momaday's calm, clear prose and stories. Words are medicine. There is wisdom in sharing what one...

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...

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...

A collection of playfully elucidating essays to help reluctant poetry readers become well-versed in verse

Developed from Adam Sol’s popular blog, How a Poem Moves is a collection of 35 short essays that walks readers through an array of contemporary poems. Sol is a dynamic teacher, and in these essays, he has captured the humor and engaging...

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 »

In these brilliant new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant, and revisits the kitschy concepts like "love" and "illness" now relegated to the Museum of Obsolescence. These poems reveal the realities of life lived here, on the... 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 »

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 »