Virtual Book Display: April Poetry Month

The Newbery Medal-winning author of Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech, brings readers a story with enormous heart.  Love That Dog shows how one boy named Jack finds his voice with the help of a teacher, a pencil, some yellow paper, and of course, a dog. Written as a series of free-verse poems from Jack's point of view, and with classic poetry included in the back matter, this novel is perfect for kids and teachers, too. Jack hates poetry. Only girls write it and every time he tries to, his brain feels empty. But his teacher, Miss Stretchberry, won't stop giving her class poetry assignments--and Jack can't avoid them. But then something amazing happens. The more he writes, the more he learns that he does have something to say. "I guess it does look like a poem when you see it typed up like that."

Mary Oliver, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, celebrates love in this collection of poems. "If I have any secret stash of poems, anywhere, it might be about love, not anger," Mary Oliver once said in an interview.

Now in paperback, a major career retrospective by the California Poet Laureate, Dana Gioia So much of what we live goes on inside-- The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches Of unacknowledged love are no less real For having passed unsaid. What we conceal Is always more than what we dare confide. Think of the letters that we write our dead. --from "Unsaid" Dana Gioia has long been celebrated as a poet of sharp intelligence and brooding emotion with an ingenious command of his craft. 99 Poems: New & Selected gathers for the first time work from across his career, including many remarkable new poems. Gioia has not arranged this selection chronologically but instead has organized it by theme in seven sections: Mystery, Place, Remembrance, Imagination, Stories, Songs, and Love. The result is a book that reveals and renews the pleasures, consolations, and sense of wonder that poetry bestows.

A 2021 Coretta Scott King Book Award Illustrator Honor Book. A picture-book biography of celebrated poet Gwendolyn Brooks, the first Black person to win the Pulitzer Prize. Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) is known for her poems about "real life." She wrote about love, loneliness, family, and poverty--showing readers how just about anything could become a beautiful poem.

In Poetry and Animals, Onno Oerlemans explores a broad range of English-language poetry about animals from the Middle Ages to the contemporary world. The book considers several different types of poetry: allegorical poems, poems about "the animal" broadly conceived, poems about species of animal, poems about individual animals or the animal as individual, and poems about hybrids and hybridity.

There has never been a gathering like Poetry in Person, which brings us a wealth of understanding and unparalleled access to poets and their drafts, unraveling how a great poem is actually made.

Central to the book is a series of poems outlining the speaker's (the poet's) experiences with what he calls "Cultural Lynching." These poems speak of appropriation, theft, isolation, and exploitation, all within a context of an American hegemony that intensifies the racial politics and ageism underlying the events described.

A 2021 Newbery Honor Book In a moving, lyrical tale about the cost and fragility of freedom, a New York Times best-selling author and an acclaimed artist follow the life of a man who courageously shipped himself out of slavery.

The definitive volume of the complete poetic works of Frost.

A remarkable celebration of Richard Wright, poetry, and contemporary black boys at play. From walking a dog to watching a sunset to finding a beetle, Richard Wright's haiku puts everyday moments into focus. Now, more than fifty years after they were written, these poems continue to reflect our everyday experiences. Paired with the photo-collage artwork of Nina Crews, Seeing into Tomorrow celebrates the lives of contemporary African American boys and offers an accessible introduction to one of the most important African American writers of the twentieth century.

A collection of 192 poems, some of which were published at the author's death.

Book advocate Colby Sharp presents more than forty beloved, award-winning, diverse and bestselling authors and illustrators in a creative challenge! Colby Sharp invited more than forty authors and illustrators to provide story starters for each other; photos, drawings, poems, prose, or anything they could dream up. When they received their prompts, they responded by transforming these seeds into any form of creative work they wanted to share. The result is a stunning collection of words, art, poetry, and stories by some of our most celebrated children book creators. A section of extra story starters by every contributor provides fresh inspiration for readers to create works of their own. Here is an innovative book that offers something for every kind of reader and creator!

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize * Poet Laureate of the United States * Tracy K. Smith. With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence.

Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and former U.S. Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey's elegiac Native Guard is a deeply personal volume that brings together two legacies of the Deep South. The title of the collection refers to the Mississippi Native Guards, a black regiment whose role in the Civil War has been largely overlooked by history.

During the otherwise quiet course of his life as a poet, Wendell Berry has become "mad" at what contemporary society has made of its land, its communities, and its past.

W.S. Merwin is arguably the most influential American poet of the last half-century--an artist who has transfigured and reinvigorated the vision of poetry of our time. Migration: New and Selected Poems is a distillation of the best poems from a profound body of work, and includes a selection of new poems.

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." This special, limited edition celebrates Billy Collins's years as U.S. Poet Laureate. Questions About Angels--one of the books that helped establish and secure his reputation and popularity during the 1990s--is remarkable for its wry, inquisitive voice and its sheer imaginative range. Edward Hirsch selected this classic book for the National Poetry Series, and each of Collins's poems-from his meditation on forgetfulness to his musings on the behavior of angels-is an exploration of imaginative possibilities. Whether reading him for the first time or the fiftieth, this collector's edition is a must-have for anyone interested in the poet the New York Times calls simply "the real thing."

Students and older readers alike will come to understand the content of the sonnets, appreciate the insight they offer, and enjoy their consummate beauty as literary works of art.

Maya Angelou's brave poem is illustrated by the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Angelou is well-known for her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Biographies of the artists are included.

Introduce children to Shakespeare with this wonderful, fully annotated collection of sonnets and soliloquies, enhanced with beautiful, highly realistic color paintings that bring each excerpt to vivid life.

The complete poetic works, many of them narrative in nature, are included in this volume.

The most comprehensive English-language collection of work ever by “the greatest poet of the twentieth century—in any language” (Gabriel GarcÍa MÁrquez) In his work a continent awakens to consciousness,” wrote the Swedish Academy in awarding the Nobel Prize to Pablo Neruda, author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin America’s most revered writers and political figures—a loyal member of the Communist party, a lifelong diplomat and onetime senator, a man lionized during his lifetime as “the people’s poet.” Born Neftali Basoalto, Neruda adopted his pen name in fear of his family’s disapproval, and yet by the age of twenty-five he was already famous for the book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, which remains his most beloved. During the next fifty years, a seemingly boundless metaphorical language linked his romantic fantasies and the fierce moral and political compass—exemplified in books such as Canto General—that made him an adamant champion of the dignity of ordinary men and women. Edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans, this is the most comprehensive single-volume collection of this prolific poet’s work in English. Here the finest translations of nearly six hundred poems by Neruda are collected and join specially commissioned new translations that attest to Neruda’s still-resounding presence in American letters.

Step into a series of dazzling, funny, melancholy, and joyous moments with this collection of haiku masterworks.

The story of a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury (England). The pilgrims, who come from all layers of society, tell stories to each other to pass the time on their journey to Canterbury.

Shel Silverstein, the New York Times bestselling author of The Giving Tree, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, and Every Thing On It, has created a poetry collection that is outrageously funny and deeply profound. Come in . . . for where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein's world begins. You'll meet a boy who turns into a TV set, and a girl who eats a whale. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and crocodiles go to the dentist. Shel Silverstein's masterful collection of poems and drawings stretches the bounds of imagination and will be cherished by readers of all ages. This is a collection that belongs on everyone's bookshelf. Makes a great gift for special occasions such as holidays, birthdays, and graduation. And don't miss Runny Babbit Returns, the new book by Shel Silverstein!