Recommendations based on "Appalachian Elegy"

In 1936, twenty-year-old Edward Weismiller became the youngest poet to win the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets prize. Today, more than sixty years later, he retains that distinction. Yale University Press here reintroduces Edward Weismiller - now the oldest living Younger Poet - with the publication of his latest book of poetry. Weismiller’s is "a talent that has kept faith with itself and its sources," says W. S. Merwin, current judge of the Younger Poets Series. In Walking Toward the Sun, youthful lyricism has given way to plainness of speech - even spareness. These poems are honest and unflinching, always striking in their prosody. They will remind some readers of Yeats, for they convey nobility in the face of old age, infirmity, and disappointment. Weismiller sings powerfully about a world of loss, but he is never grim or despairing. The poet in old age remains hopeful, open to possibility, and always aware of beauty in the smallest places.

"The gift of Oliver's poetry is that she communicates the beauty she finds in the world and makes it unforgettable" ( Miami Herald ). This has never been truer than in Long Life, a luminous collection of seventeen essays and ten poems.With the grace and precision that are the hallmarks of her work, Oliver shows us how writing "is a way of offering praise to the world" and suggests we see her poems as "little alleluias." Whether describing a goosefish stranded at low tide, the feeling of being baptized by the mist from a whale's blowhole, or the "connection between soul and landscape," Oliver invites readers to find themselves and their experiences at the center of her world. In Long Life she also speaks of poets and writers: Wordsworth's "whirlwind" of "beauty and strangeness"; Hawthorne's "sweet-tempered" side; and Emerson's belief that "a man's inclination, once awakened to it, would be to turn all the heavy sails of his life to a moral purpose."With consummate craftsmanship, Mary Oliver has created a breathtaking volume sure to add to her reputation as "one of our very best poets" (New York Times Book Review ).

Highly regarded throughout her prestigious literary career, and today seen as an undeniable master of her art, Elizabeth Bishop remains one of America's most influential and widely acclaimed poets. This is the definitive collection of her work. The Complete Poems includes the books North & South, A Cold Spring, Questions of Travel, and Geography III, as well as previously uncollected poems, translations, and juvenilia.

“yrsa daley-ward’s bone is a symphony of breaking and mending. . . . she lays her hands on the pulse of the thing. . . . an expert storyteller. of the rarest. and purest kind.” —nayyirah waheed, author of salt.From the celebrated poet Yrsa Daley-Ward, a poignant collection of poems about the heart, life, and the inner self.Foreword by Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American MemoirBone. Visceral. Close to. Stark.The poems in Yrsa Daley-Ward’s collection bone are exactly that: reflections on a particular life honed to their essence—so clear and pared-down, they become universal.From navigating the oft competing worlds of religion and desire, to balancing society’s expectations with the raw experience of being a woman in the world; from detailing the experiences of growing up as a first generation black British woman, to working through situations of dependence and abuse; from finding solace in the echoing caverns of depression and loss, to exploring the vulnerability and redemption in falling in love, each of the raw and immediate poems in Daley-Ward’s bone resonates to the core of what it means to be human.“You will come away bruised.You will come away bruisedbut this will give you poetry.”

“The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling author“He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriterThere is not a wasted word in Dangling in the Tournefortia, a selection of poems full of wit, struggles, perception, and simplicity. Charles Bukowski writes of women, gambling and booze while his words remain honest and pure.

Since the publication of her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou has been celebrated as one of America's most important writers and her words are indelibly imprinted on the hearts of millions. Inspired by the woman who has inspired us all, Rainbow in the Cloud offers nearly 300 of Dr Angelou's wonderful quotes, organised in themed sections (including art, love, spirituality, womanhood, and life in the American South) - from sage advice and beautiful stanzas to humorous quips and pointed observations - drawn from each of her published works and from her celebrated (and much shared) social media posts. This collection also features special words of wisdom she shared often with her family, chosen by her son, Guy Johnson.

Winner of the 1981 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. "David Wojahn's poems concern themselves with emotive basics: leaving home, watching those we love age and die, the inescapable drone of our mortality. Yet as poems, they are far from usual. They help us welcome inside, again and again, the most personal of feelings." -Richard Hugo, Poet and Judge of the Competition

The debut collection from a 2021 Whiting Award and Guggenheim Fellow recipient whose “astounding, dolorous, rejoicing voice is indispensable” (Tracy K. Smith)   The Sobbing School, Joshua Bennett’s mesmerizing debut collection of poetry, presents songs for the living and the dead that destabilize and de-familiarize representations of black history and contemporary black experience. What animates these poems is a desire to assert life, and interiority, where there is said to be none. Figures as widely divergent as Bobby Brown, Martin Heidegger, and the 19th-century performance artist Henry Box Brown, as well as Bennett’s own family and childhood best friends, appear and are placed in conversation in order to show that there is always a world beyond what we are socialized to see value in, always alternative ways of thinking about relation that explode easy binaries.

The classic volume by the distinguished modern poet, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, showcases an esteemed artist's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world.

Read by the PoetOne Cassette, 1 hourThe second installment of our exclusive The Voice of the Poet series, comprised of rare archival recordings, some never before released, featuring the acclaimed Elizabeth Bishop.This audio production is accompanied by a book containing the text to the poems and a commentary by J.D. McClatchy.