Showing titles in Poetry

Take a journey across country, explore the love, the hurt, the pain. In this poetic trip down shady lanes and beachside promenades, stay in identical hotel rooms, feel the tug of the sea, and witness shards of history and the jagged fangs of mystery.

Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a collection of narratives written between 1387 and 1400, tells of a group of 30 people from all layers of society who pass the time along their pilgrimage to Canterbury by telling stories to one another, their interaction mediated (at times) by the affable host - Chaucer himself. Naxos AudioBooks’ third volume presents the tales of six people, here in an unabridged modern verse translation (by Frank Ernest Hill, 1935).

From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself - and us - home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America - and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman. Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.

When we don’t process the pain, where does it go? What is the purpose of being alive when there’s so much suffering? What does it mean to live and die with dignity in a world utterly opposed to it? Your Wound/My Garden is a collection of poetry written during Covid-19 lockdown.

Deaf Republic opens in a time of political unrest in an occupied territory. It is uncertain where we are or when, in what country or during what conflict, but we come to recognise that these events are also happening here, right now. This astonishing parable in poems unfolds episodically like a play, its powerful narrative provoked by a tragic opening scene: when soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear - in that moment, all have gone deaf. Inside this silence, their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language.

From the pen of comic genius Spike Milligan, here are 62 hilarious gems read by Spike himself, including "Ying-Tong-Iddle-I-Po", "This Is a Stick Up", and "Fleas, Knees, and Hidden Elephants".

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 the bend in the Tallapoosa River to a place near the Arkansas River. Stomp dance songs, blues, and jazz ballads echo throughout. Lost ancestors are recalled. Resilient songs are born, even as they grieve the loss of their country. Joy Harjo is at the top of her form in Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.

From the two-term Poet Laureate of the United States Billy Collins comes his first compilation of new and selected poems in 12 years. Aimless Love combines new poems with selections from four previous books— Nine Horses, The Trouble with Poetry, Ballistics, and Horoscopes for the Dead. Collins’s unmistakable voice, which brings together plain speech with imaginative surprise, is clearly heard with every word, reminding us how he has managed to enrich the tapestry of contemporary poetry and greatly expand its audience.

The Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) is best known for his epic poem Metamorphoses, a collection of myths and legends from Ancient Greece and Rome. His works continue to be widely read and admired, and he is regarded as one of the most significant poets of ancient Rome. Ovid’s love poems are both brilliant and evocative. In Amores, the romantic mysteriousness of elegiac love-poetry is exploded by his witty and ironic treatment of the form. Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris both lay down the rules for the game of love, which both sexes can play.

It is hard to top the pleasure of a woodland walk in Spring unless of course you have a lyric poet as your guide. Now that is possible with Poets of Nature. Let Walt Whitman, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Bronte, and Ralph Waldo Emerson take you into that realm of Nature "where we seldom wander".

This collection of popular poems from the master American poet and storyteller Edgar A. Poe includes: “The Raven”, “A Dream”, “The City in the Sea”, “Annabel Lee”, “A Dream Within a Dream”, “Lenore”, “Eldorado”, “To Helen”, “The Haunted Palace”, and “Alone”.

Along the centuries numerous interpretations and definitions of Sufism have waxed and waned but the undeniable beauty of their verse in its myriad of forms including the musical Ghazal (love song), Masnavi (narrative) and Rubai (quatrain) always remains. Our chronological volume of the classic Sufi poets helps us understand the spiritual direction of Sufism, starting with Rabia in the 8th century through to Khwaja Ghulam Farid over a thousand years later.

Transcendentalism embodies the concept that people have a deeper and more profound understanding of the world around them than simply by what they can glimpse with their senses. In this collection of essays and poems, the works of three transcendentalist authors are shared, each with their own impressions and opinions supporting the movement.

A highwayman ravages the countryside, robbing the unsuspecting traveler. He promises to come at midnight for Bess, the landlord’s daughter. But when the redcoats come, and lay a trap for the highwayman at the inn, Bess warns her lover in a method and manner never to be forgotten.

When Christopher was six, the poems of Milne were always on hand to reassure him that other children were just as puzzled and naughty and silly as he was, and that grown-ups could be even sillier. When he turned 60, he decided it was high time there was an equally reassuring volume for those of his generation who were not only more confused than ever but were losing their teeth, their hair and, all too often, their car keys.

A John Wayne State of Mind is the second collection of poems by the Anglo Welsh poet Ian Kenneth Bailey. The author lives in West Cork, Ireland, and many of the 41 poems - with biographical footnotes - reflect his unique experiences on the course of 2019, when, in the author's own words, he "was bonfired on a pyre of lies in Paris". A John Wayne State of Mind is the second collection and a follow up to earlier historic poems entitled The West Cork Way.

John Clare was the forgotten Romantic poet, until the late 20th century. Known by his contemporaries as the Peasant Poet, he recorded in his poems the natural landscape of rural England before the Industrial Revolution. His poems rival Wordsworth’s for their sensitivity to nature and pantheism: ‘I feel a beautiful providence ever about me,’ Clare wrote. But his life was a long struggle against poverty and mental collapse. Some of his finest poems were written in the local asylum

Acerbic wit and stinging satire are contrasted with delicate sensibility and passionate desire in the work of the Latin poet Catullus. Armed with an urbane sophistication and an aristocratic circle of friends, Catullus moved about easily in the upper ranks of Roman society and was acquainted with Cicero, Caesar, and Pompey among others.

Originally published in 1954 to honor Stevens’ 57th birthday, the book was rushed into print for the occasion and contained scores of errors. These have now been corrected in one place for the first time by Stevens scholars John N. Serio and Christopher Beyers, based on original editions and manuscripts. The Collected Poems is the one volume that Stevens intended to contain all the poems he wished to preserve, presented in the way he wanted. It is an enduring monument to his dazzling achievement.

Written between August 2019 and June 2020, these poems are concerned with the balancing of darkness and light in our everyday lives, the search for an understanding of pain and sorrow, and the processing of other thoughts we’d usually avoid by filling our days with mindless distractions.