National Network for Equitable Library Service

Considered by many to be the quintessential American poet, Walt Whitman (1819–92) exerted a profound influence on all the American poets who came after him. And it was with this inspired, oceanic medley, "Song of Myself" (which in the first editions of Leaves of Grass was still nameless), that this great poet first made himself known to the world.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), English poet and wife of the poet Robert Browning, is perhaps best known for her remarkable series of 44 love poems Sonnets from the Portuguese. Published in 1850, they were written by Mrs. Browning to her husband during the early years of their relationship. Their obvious sincerity, gentleness, and passion and the devotion and gratitude they express have made the poems popular favorites with generations of readers. Mrs. Browning, however, addressed a wide range of other concerns.

Pulitzer Prize Winner – From one of today's best poets – a stunningly poignant sequence of poems that tells the story of a divorce, embracing strands of love, sex, sorrow, memory, and new freedom. In this wise and intimate telling – which carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending – Sharon Olds opens her heart to the reader, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love’s sight; the surprising physical bond that still exists between a couple during parting; the loss of everything from her husband’s smile to the set of his hip.

"Jane Kenyon had a virtually faultless ear. She was an exquisite master of the art of poetry." —Wendell Berry. Published twenty-five years after her untimely death — The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon presents the essential work of one of America's most cherished poets — celebrated for her tenacity, spirit, and grace. In their inquisitive explorations and direct language, Jane Kenyon's poems disclose a quiet certainty in the natural world and a lifelong dialogue with her faith and her questioning of it.

"Kevin Young has thoughtfully gathered many of these sorrowful perambulations and grievous plummets." -- Billy Collins. The Art of Losing is the first anthology of its kind, delivering poetry with a purpose. Editor Kevin Young has introduced and selected 150 devastatingly beautiful poems that embrace the pain and heartbreak of mourning.

"Laux writes gritty, tough, lyrical poems that depict the actual nature of life in the West today."—Philip Levine. The narrative poems in Dorianne Laux's fifth collection charge through the summer of love, where Vietnam casts a long shadow, and into the present day, where she compassionately paints the smoky bars, graffiti, and addiction of urban life. Laux is "continually engaging and, at her best, luminous" (San Diego Union-Tribune).

The original and classic The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas is available once again, now with a brilliant new preface by Paul Muldoon. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas contains poems that Thomas personally decided best represented his work. A year before its publication Thomas died from swelling of the brain triggered by excessive drinking. (A piece of New Directions history: it was our founder James Laughlin who identified Thomas' body at the morgue of St.

From one of America's most cherished and celebrated poets, a landmark collection of Nikki Giovanni's early work! "Nikki Giovanni is one of our national treasures." — Gloria Naylor When Nikki Giovanni's poems first emerged during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, she immediately took a place among the most celebrated and controversial artists of our time. More than 50 years later, Giovanni still stands as one of the most commanding, luminous voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape.

Carolyn Forché's The Country Between Us bears witness to what she saw in El Salvador in the late 1970s, when she travelled around a country erupting into civil war. Documenting killings and other brutal human rights abuses, while working alongside Archbishop Oscar Romero's church group, she found in her poetry the only possible way to come to terms with what she was experiencing first-hand. By 1980, when the fighting was becoming too dangerous, Archbishop Romero urged Forché to return home, asking her to 'talk to the American people, tell them what is happening to us.

This collection invites you to meet more than 40 individual women – both real and imagined – whom you could long to know as each moves through her own life's dance. From the glamorous Shelagh to mining prospector Eira, from accomplished sculptor Anne to harried young mother Marianne, or new widow Dora to feisty senior Elvira, some achieve clarity and momentary success – others are caught mid-step. Yearning to find their unique rhythms, they are our sisters under the skin.