Collection: Poetry

Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, this collection of experimental and visual poems dives into the history and culture of the poet's homeland, Guam.

This book is the fifth collection in Craig Santos Perez's ongoing from unincorporated territory series about the history of his homeland, the western Pacific island of Guåhan (Guam), and the culture of his indigenous Chamoru people. "Åmot" is the Chamoru word for "medicine," commonly referring to medicinal plants. Traditional Chamoru healers were known as yo'åmte; they gathered åmot in the jungle and recited chants and invocations of taotao'mona, or ancestral spirits, in the healing process.

Through experimental and visual poetry, Perez explores how storytelling can become a symbolic form of åmot, offering healing from the traumas of colonialism, militarism, migration, environmental injustice, and the death of elders.

Award-winning poet Elaine Equi selects the poems for the 2023 edition of The Best American Poetry, "a 'best' anthology that really lives up to its title" (Chicago Tribune).

Since its debut in 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been "one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world" (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents some of the year's most striking and innovative poems, with comments from the poets themselves offering insight into their work.

For The Best American Poetry 2023 guest editor Elaine Equi, whose own work is "deft, delicate [and] subversive" (August Kleinzahler), has made astute choices representing contemporary poetry at its most dynamic. The result is an exceptionally coherent vision of American poetry today.

Including valuable introductory essays contributed by the series and guest editors, the 2023 volume is sure to capture the attention of both Best American Poetry loyalists and newcomers to the series.

Celebrate Christmas with everyone's favorite character from the bestselling Butt book series! This delightful rhyming story follows our inventive young hero as he dreams about dressing up his plain backside in something festive "with layers and layers of green, with baubles that glow, bows in a row, and a star where it's easily seen!" Will he get his wish? Kids will find out as they giggle all the way through this sweet holiday story.

A board book featuring Thing One and Thing Two--from Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat--that's perfect for Valentine's Day and every day!

Written in super-simple rhyme, this sweet, sturdy board book starring Thing One and Thing Two is about the things Things love--among them sharing, caring, smiling, hugging, and blowing kisses!

A perfect gift for Valentine's Day, baby showers, or any time of year, this is an ideal way to introduce the very youngest children to the magic of Dr. Seuss!

This hilarious follow-up to the New York Times bestselling poetry book I'm Just No Good at Rhyming is full of surprising twists of wit and wordplay that will have readers rolling on the floor laughing!

"Highly recommended, it gets 5 stars and 8 moons and a chef's kiss and a tip of the hat and a jump in the lake from me."--Bob Odenkirk, award-winning actor, writer, and comedian

I'm Just No Good at Rhyming is this century's most acclaimed comedic poetry collection so far, described as "a worthy heir to Silverstein, Seuss, and even Ogden Nash" (PublishersWeekly), "wildly imaginative...inspired and inspiring" (Kirkus), and as "everything a book for kids should be" (B.J. Novak). Now, Chris Harris delivers all that and more with dazzling new heights of creativity, kooky conundrums, witty wordsmithing, and of course, wacky laugh-out-loud fun!

There's a whole new cast of characters to meet, from the Nail-Clipping Fairy (who delivers teeth at night), to Orloc the Destroyer (who can be defeated only by his mommy), to the Elderly Caveman (who complains about the younger generation obsessed with playing with fire). There are more mind-bending verbal and visual riddles, plus there's plenty of hilarious hijinks hiding around every corner, whether it's a buffalo that escapes one poem and roams through others or a meteor threatening to land on the book and obliterate everything. There's even a mini book-within-a-book! In between it all, cartoonist Andrea Tsurumi's diverse range of exuberant people, creatures, and anthropomorphic objects ripple through the pages with playful energy.

If your head has a bellyache as you read this book, it will only be because you're laughing WAY. TOO. HARD!

Newest work from Mahmoud Darwish--the most acclaimed poet in the Arab world

In this evocative and playful companion to their New York Times bestselling picture book How to Read a Book, Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander teams up with poet Deanna Nikaido and Caldecott Honoree Melissa Sweet to celebrate the magic of discovering your very own poetry in the world around you.

Begin

with a question

like an acorn

waiting for spring.

From this first stanza, readers are invited to pay attention--and to see that paying attention itself is poetry. Kwame Alexander and Deanna Nikaido's playful text and Melissa Sweet's dynamic, inventive artwork are paired together to encourage readers to listen, feel, and discover the words that dance in the world around them--poems just waiting to be written down.

From the New York Times bestselling Llama Llama series comes a new concept board book about opposites!

Llama Llama is ready to learn about opposites. Big and small, awake and asleep, open and closed, they're all fun to learn with Llama Llama and Mama!

A perfect gift for young readers, this concept book can be enjoyed by Llama Llama fans young and old.

"Things We Don't Talk About" is a short collection of thoughts, quotes and poetry highlighting some hardships of living with depression and mental illness and the effects it has on relationships with yourself and loved ones. It's a personal lens into the darkest places your mind can take you and the struggle of battling your own mind. It's a peak of what's underneath the surface that most people battle in silence, something you may or may not relate to. If you're reading this, it's not too late and you're not alone. In addition, I just wanted to say thank you for allowing me to share a part of me, whether it was specifically of value to you. I hope to make at least one person in this world to feel less alone. Communication and or expressing our feelings, it's one of the hardest things to do. Often we get discouraged to even try to express ourselves due to the fear of not being understood and or not doing it the "right" way. We are all human and the best thing we can do is to continue trying. Please keep an open mind and always lead with love. Note: Originally published in January 2019, updated version published November 2020.

Across the ages, cats have provided their adopted humans with companionship, affection, mystery, and innumerable metaphors; cats cast a mirror on their beholders; cats endlessly captivate and hypnotize, frustrate and delight. And to poets, in particular, these enigmatic creatures are the most delightful and beguiling of muses (Charles Baudelaire: "the sole source of amusement in one's lodgings") as they go about purring, prowling, hunting, playing, meowing, and napping, often oblivious to their so-called masters (Jorge Luis Borges: "you live in other time, lord of your realm--a world as closed and separate as a dream").

Cat Poems offers a litter of odes to our beloved felines by Charles Baudelaire, Stevie Smith, Christopher Smart, Denise Levertov, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Rainer Maria Rilke, Muriel Spark, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and many others.

Tupac Shakur's most intimate and honest thoughts were uncovered only after his death with the instant classic The Rose That Grew from Concrete.

His talent was unbounded a raw force that commanded attention and respect.
His death was tragic--a violent homage to the power of his voice.
His legacy is indomitable--as vibrant and alive today as it has ever been.

For the first time in paperback, this collection of deeply personal poetry is a mirror into the legendary artist's enigmatic world and its many contradictions.

Written in his own hand from the time he was nineteen, these seventy-two poems embrace his spirit, his energy--and his ultimate message of hope.

A classic Halloween rhyme is brought to life with adorable illustrations in this spooky board book.

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one says, "My, it's getting late!"

What tricks or treats are in store for the five little pumpkins? A classic rhyme is brought to life with adorable illustrations in this spooky board book.

Rifqa is Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd's ode to his late grandmother, and to the Palestinian struggle for liberation. 'Jerusalem is ours.'

From TikTok phenomenon Whitney Hanson, a brand-new collection of poems exploring the cadences of love, loss, grief, and healing

i am finally finding a balance,
a great harmony
between the loss
and the love,
between who i was
and who i have become

In this exquisite poetry collection, Whitney Hanson, chronicles the loss of a loved one, tracing the progression of grief and healing through the lens of music.

We each begin with a simple note, but as life progresses, we're led to the next note, and the next--all of which combine to form the melody of a song and a life. As life becomes more complicated and complex, we find that loss, grief, and heartache can muffle our music, making the world go silent.

But as Whitney's poems show, all of these rests and pauses in the music are part of the composition of life, and it is only by moving through the variations that we can find the harmony and grace that come with healing.

An astonishing collection about interconnectedness-between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves--from National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist and U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limóoacute;n."I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers," writes Limón. "I am the hurting kind." What does it mean to be the hurting kind? To be sensitive not only to the world's pain and joys, but to the meanings that bend in the scrim between the natural world and the human world? To divine the relationships between us all? To perceive ourselves in other beings--and to know that those beings are resolutely their own, that they "do not / care to be seen as symbols"?With Limón's remarkable ability to trace thought, The Hurting Kind explores those questions--incorporating others' stories and ways of knowing, making surprising turns, and always reaching a place of startling insight. These poems slip through the seasons, teeming with horses and kingfishers and the gleaming eyes of fish. And they honor parents, stepparents, and grandparents: the sacrifices made, the separate lives lived, the tendernesses extended to a hurting child; the abundance, in retrospect, of having two families.Along the way, we glimpse loss. There are flashes of the pandemic, ghosts whose presence manifests in unexpected memories and the mysterious behavior of pets left behind. But The Hurting Kind is filled, above all, with connection and the delight of being in the world. "Slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still / green in the morning's shade," writes Limón of a groundhog in her garden, "she is doing what she can to survive."

A remarkable poetry collection with "inextinguishable generosity and abundant wisdom" (Monica Youn) from Clint Smith, the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Critics Circle award-winning author of How the Word Is Passed.

Clint Smith's vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult. Above Ground wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body. Smith's lyrical, narrative poems bring the reader on a journey not only through the early years of his children's lives, but through the changing world in which they are growing up--through the changing world of which we are all a part.

Above Ground is a breathtaking collection that follows Smith's first award-winning book of poetry, Counting Descent.