April is National Poetry Month. If you’d like a little more poetry in your life, check out some of the newest additions to MHL’s poetry collection.
Anishinaabe songs for a new millennium
In Anishinaabe Songs for a New Millennium, Marcie R. Rendon summons her ancestors' songs, and her poem-songs evoke the world still unfolding around us, reflecting our place in time for future generations. Bringing memory to life, the senses to attention, she breaks the boundaries that time would impose, carrying the Anishinaabe way of life forward in the world.
Bless the blood : a cancer memoir
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When Walela is diagnosed at twenty-three with advanced stage blood cancer, they're suddenly thrust into the unsympathetic world of tubes and pills, doctors who don't use their correct pronouns, and hordes of "well-meaning" but patronizing people offering unsolicited advice as they navigate rocky personal relationships and share their story online. But this experience also deepens their relationship to their ancestors, providing added support from another realm. Walela's diagnosis becomes a catalyst for their self-realization. As they fill out forms in the insurance office in downtown Los Angeles or travel to therapy in wealthier neighborhoods, they begin to understand that cancer is where all forms of their oppression intersect: Disabled. Fat. Black. Queer. Nonbinary.
When Walela is diagnosed at twenty-three with advanced stage blood cancer, they're suddenly thrust into the unsympathetic world of tubes and pills, doctors who don't use their correct pronouns, and hordes of "well-meaning" but patronizing people offering unsolicited advice as they navigate rocky personal relationships and share their story online. But this experience also deepens their relationship to their ancestors, providing added support from another realm. Walela's diagnosis becomes a catalyst for their self-realization. As they fill out forms in the insurance office in downtown Los Angeles or travel to therapy in wealthier neighborhoods, they begin to understand that cancer is where all forms of their oppression intersect: Disabled. Fat. Black. Queer. Nonbinary.
A century of poetry in the New Yorker : 1925-2025
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This poetry anthology from the past 100 years of the New Yorker magazine explores decades of poetry in sections themed by time of day, showcasing verse that reflects cultural moments and the evolving voice of modern society.
This poetry anthology from the past 100 years of the New Yorker magazine explores decades of poetry in sections themed by time of day, showcasing verse that reflects cultural moments and the evolving voice of modern society.
Foxglovewise : poems
Foxglovewise is, at its core, a response to the singular experience of the loss of one's parents. It begins at an Eastern Orthodox Epiphany ritual in Florida and ends in a cemetery in Los Angeles. Yet, as with Ange Mlinko's other books of poetry, the collection uses geography as a trope for the ways in which we try to map out our lives and make them legible, even as poetry, music, and paintings suggest that much of what happens, or matters, to us is "not on the maps" (not to mention "the apps"). Whether it's Europa borne over the waves, or gravestones bearing aliases rather than birth names, or books bequeathed to us by relatives in languages we can't read, we live "up in the air" or "on the wing" and not in fixed coordinates.
Glory, too : poems
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In a marriage of poetry, faith, and worship, Ms. Grimes' poems illuminate the Scriptures that grace every Sunday of the year. Her inimitable voice and imagination offer glimpses of glory we might not otherwise see, throughout the seasons of the year.
In a marriage of poetry, faith, and worship, Ms. Grimes' poems illuminate the Scriptures that grace every Sunday of the year. Her inimitable voice and imagination offer glimpses of glory we might not otherwise see, throughout the seasons of the year.
Helen of Troy, 1993 : poems
Part myth retelling, part character study, this debut poetry collection reimagines the mythic beauty from Homer's "Iliad" as a disgruntled housewife in 1990s Tennessee. Zoccola explores Helen's isolation and rebellion as her expansive personality clashes with the social rigidity of a small town: she marries the wrong man, gives birth to a child she is not ready to parent, and begins an affair that throws her life into chaos, but she never surrenders ownership of her story or her choices.
The holy & broken bliss : poems in plague time
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Nationally acclaimed and multi-award-winning poet, Ostriker, brings The Holy & Broken Bliss to light after the pandemic--these keenly observant and urgent poems feel grounded in daily life, the rituals of living, and their tendernesses. Despite our deep flaws and imperfections, there can still be cause for joy, and there is always a reason for celebration. Poems find strength in marriage, appreciating an unbreakable bond in the middle of the world breaking down. Often, the spare lines of these poems enhance their feeling of inevitability, deepening the speakers' contemplations of death, writing in the face of death-not only from within the pandemic but by many plagues we are afflicted with. The poems ask us to consider what living looks like inside of ongoing misery (misery we often are responsible for making and accepting). They call us to ask ourselves how we make our lives meaningful, ourselves worthy when despair is ever-present. The Holy & Broken Bliss contemplates free will, autonomy, self-control, the commodification of ourselves, and our desires for vengeance, to be sated by anger, to be angry, and to weigh our collective sicknesses"
Nationally acclaimed and multi-award-winning poet, Ostriker, brings The Holy & Broken Bliss to light after the pandemic--these keenly observant and urgent poems feel grounded in daily life, the rituals of living, and their tendernesses. Despite our deep flaws and imperfections, there can still be cause for joy, and there is always a reason for celebration. Poems find strength in marriage, appreciating an unbreakable bond in the middle of the world breaking down. Often, the spare lines of these poems enhance their feeling of inevitability, deepening the speakers' contemplations of death, writing in the face of death-not only from within the pandemic but by many plagues we are afflicted with. The poems ask us to consider what living looks like inside of ongoing misery (misery we often are responsible for making and accepting). They call us to ask ourselves how we make our lives meaningful, ourselves worthy when despair is ever-present. The Holy & Broken Bliss contemplates free will, autonomy, self-control, the commodification of ourselves, and our desires for vengeance, to be sated by anger, to be angry, and to weigh our collective sicknesses"
Mojave ghost : a novel poem
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Mojave Ghost initiates an unusually tender bond with the reader as it chronicles an intimate relationship with arresting honesty and vividness. Moving through grief and loss towards a renewal that never sidesteps the wholeness of experience, Gander's new collection discovers an articulate language for the merging of exterior and interior landscapes. Gander, trained as a geologist, walked along much of the 800-mile San Andreas Fault toward the desolate town of his birth and found himself crossing permeable dimensions of time and space, correlating his emotions and the stricken landscape with other divisions: the fractures and folds underlying not only our country, but any self in its relationship with others. The result is this moving new collection that unforgettably describes a spiritual and physical journey. With its confiding tones and candid self-examination, Mojave Ghost is Gander's most inviting and poignant book yet.
Mojave Ghost initiates an unusually tender bond with the reader as it chronicles an intimate relationship with arresting honesty and vividness. Moving through grief and loss towards a renewal that never sidesteps the wholeness of experience, Gander's new collection discovers an articulate language for the merging of exterior and interior landscapes. Gander, trained as a geologist, walked along much of the 800-mile San Andreas Fault toward the desolate town of his birth and found himself crossing permeable dimensions of time and space, correlating his emotions and the stricken landscape with other divisions: the fractures and folds underlying not only our country, but any self in its relationship with others. The result is this moving new collection that unforgettably describes a spiritual and physical journey. With its confiding tones and candid self-examination, Mojave Ghost is Gander's most inviting and poignant book yet.
Scorched earth
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Scorched Earth moves between ruins and radical love-fragility and tenderness in the wake of a divorce transform and expand into virtuosic stanzas, full of ache and sweetness. From ekphrastic poems on Kara Walker, to a standout series on the first Black Bachelorette, Clark's stanzas shift between reverence and irreverence, hold institutional and historical pains alongside sensuality and queer, Black joys.
Scorched Earth moves between ruins and radical love-fragility and tenderness in the wake of a divorce transform and expand into virtuosic stanzas, full of ache and sweetness. From ekphrastic poems on Kara Walker, to a standout series on the first Black Bachelorette, Clark's stanzas shift between reverence and irreverence, hold institutional and historical pains alongside sensuality and queer, Black joys.
Tranz
In her debut collection, Tranz, Spencer Williams writes equally riotous and vulnerable poems, penning a love letter to trans people and their audacity to exist in a world that constantly endangers them structurally and individually. Her blistering lyrics and acerbic wit never flatten her subjects but rather filet normative hypocrisy to reveal unspoken truths.
The Wickedest
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Set over one night at an exclusive South London house party, this story captures the intensity of underground shoob culture as Caleb Femi weaves together personal and communal voices to explore community, marginalization, and resistance through text messages, vignettes and verse.
Set over one night at an exclusive South London house party, this story captures the intensity of underground shoob culture as Caleb Femi weaves together personal and communal voices to explore community, marginalization, and resistance through text messages, vignettes and verse.
With my back to the world : poems
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A new collection of poetry inspired by the work of Agnes Martin, exploring topics of feminism, art, depression, and grief, by the author of the prizewinning collection Obit.
A new collection of poetry inspired by the work of Agnes Martin, exploring topics of feminism, art, depression, and grief, by the author of the prizewinning collection Obit.
Wrong Norma
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Published here in a stunning edition with images created by Carson, several of the twenty-five startling poetic prose pieces have appeared in magazines and journals like The New Yorker and The Paris Review. As Carson writes: "Wrong Norma is a collection of writings about different things, like Joseph Conrad, Guantâanamo, Flaubert, snow, poverty, Roget's Thesaurus, my Dad, Saturday night. The pieces are not linked. That's why I've called them 'wrong.'"
Published here in a stunning edition with images created by Carson, several of the twenty-five startling poetic prose pieces have appeared in magazines and journals like The New Yorker and The Paris Review. As Carson writes: "Wrong Norma is a collection of writings about different things, like Joseph Conrad, Guantâanamo, Flaubert, snow, poverty, Roget's Thesaurus, my Dad, Saturday night. The pieces are not linked. That's why I've called them 'wrong.'"
A year of last things : poems
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The influential and internationally acclaimed author of seven novels, including the Booker Prize-winning The English Patient that became a major film that won Academy Awards, returns to poetry with a collection of prose that merges memory with the present.
The influential and internationally acclaimed author of seven novels, including the Booker Prize-winning The English Patient that became a major film that won Academy Awards, returns to poetry with a collection of prose that merges memory with the present.