Recommendations based on "Talking All Morning (Poets On Poetry)"
Based on your reading history, we think you will also enjoy the following books.
By Richard Hugo
The definitive collection of a major American poet’s work. Richard Hugo was, in James Wright’s words, “a great poet, true to our difficult life.” Making Certain It Goes On brings together, as Hugo wished, the poems published in book form during his lifetime, together with the new poems he wrote in his last years.
By Hollie McNish
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'An intoxicating mixture of poetry and prose, Slug is a taboo-busting delight' SCOTSMAN'One of the best poets we have' MATT HAIG'She writes with honesty, conviction, humour and love' KAE TEMPESTThe bestselling collection of poetry and prose from the Ted Hughes Award-winning author of Nobody Told MeFrom Finnish saunas and soppy otters to grief, grandparents and Kellogg's anti-masturbation pants, Slug is a book which holds a mirror lovingly up to the world, past and present, through Hollie's driving, funny, hopeful poetry and prose. Slug is about the human condition: of birth and death and how we manage the possibilities in between.'The inimitable words of poet/goddess Hollie McNish once again hold up honest, damn funny and refreshing takes on the everydayness of our lives . . . Never have we needed her more' STYLIST'Hollie always articulates exactly how I feel' CHARLY COX'A tribute to life itself' RED
By Emily Dickinson
The essential poems of Emily Dickinson selected and introduced by Joyce Carol Oates“Between them, our great visionary poets of the American nineteenth century, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, have come to represent the extreme, idiosyncratic poles of the American psyche. . . .Dickinson never shied away from the great subjects of human suffering, loss, death, even madness, but her perspective was intensely private; like Rainer Maria Rilke and Gerard Manley Hopkins, she is the great poet of inwardness, of the indefinable region of the soul in which we are, in a sense, all alone.” —from the introduction by Joyce Carol Oates
By Robert Hass
An acute and deeply insightful book of essays exploring poetic form and the role of instinct and imagination within form—from former poet laureate, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning author Robert Hass.Robert Hass—former poet laureate, winner of the National Book Award, and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize—illuminates the formal impulses that underlie great poetry in this sophisticated, graceful, and accessible volume of essays drawn from a series of lectures he delivered at the renowned Iowa Writers' Workshop.A Little Book on Form brilliantly synthesizes Hass's formidable gifts as both a poet and a critic and reflects his profound education in the art of poetry. Starting with the exploration of a single line as the basic gesture of a poem, and moving into an examination of the essential expressive gestures that exist inside forms, Hass goes beyond approaching form as a set of traditional rules that precede composition, and instead offers penetrating insight into the true openness and instinctiveness of formal creation.A Little Book on Form is a rousing reexamination of our longest lasting mode of literature from one of our greatest living poets.
By Jan Heller Levi, Muriel Rukeyser
Features selections of poetry and prose from "Theory of Flight," "The Life of Poetry," "The Speed of Darkness," "Breaking Open," "The Gates," and other works
By Billy Collins
Playfulness, spare elegance, and wit epitomize the poetry of Billy Collins.With his distinct voice and accessible language, America’s two-term Poet Laureate has opened the door to poetry for countless people for whom it might otherwise remain closed.Like the present book’s title, Collins’s poems are filled with mischief, humor, and irony, “Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address / only those in my own time zone”–but also with quiet observation, intense wonder, and a reverence for the everyday: “The birds are in their trees, / the toast is in the toaster, / and the poets are at their windows. / They are at their windows in every section of the tangerine of earth–the Chinese poets looking up at the moon, / the American poets gazing out / at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.”Through simple language, Collins shows that good poetry doesn’t have to be obscure or incomprehensible, qualities that are perhaps the real trouble with most “serious” poetry: “By now, it should go without saying / that what the oven is to the baker / and the berry-stained blouse to the drycleaner / so the window is to the poet.”In this dazzling new collection, his first in three years, Collins explores boyhood, jazz, love, the passage of time, and, of course, writing–themes familiar to Collins’s fans but made new here. Gorgeous, funny, and deeply empathetic, Billy Collins’s poetry is a window through which we see our lives as if for the first time.
By Allen Ginsberg
Describes the background of Ginsberg's famous poem, and discusses literary allusions, and techniques of composition used in creating the controversial work
By Yanyi
Winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets prizeHow can a search for self‑knowledge reveal art as a site of community? Yanyi’s arresting and straightforward poems weave experiences of immigration as a Chinese American, of racism, of mental wellness, and of gender from a queer and trans perspective. Between the contrast of high lyric and direct prose poems, Yanyi invites the reader to consider how to speak with multiple identities through trauma, transition, and ordinary life. These poems constitute an artifact of a groundbreaking and original author whose work reflects a long journey self‑guided through tarot, therapy, and the arts. Foregrounding the power of friendship, Yanyi’s poems converse with friends as much as with artists both living and dead, from Agnes Martin to Maggie Nelson to Robin Coste Lewis. This instructive collection gives voice to the multifaceted humanity within all of us and inspires attention, clarity, and hope through art-making and community.
By Carl Phillips
"After / the afterlife, there's an afterlife."In Silverchest, his twelfth book, Carl Phillips considers how our fears and excesses, the damage we cause both to others and to ourselves, intentional and not, can lead not only to a kind of wisdom but also to renewal, maybe even joy, if we're willing to commit fully to a life in which "I love you / means what, exactly?" In poems shot through with his signature mix of eros, restless energy, and moral scrutiny, Phillips argues for the particular courage it takes to look at the self squarely—not with judgment but with understanding—and extend that self more honestly toward others. It's a risk, there's a lot to lose, but if it's true that "we'll drown anyway—why not / in color?"
By Charles Bukowski
A collection of 100 poems—on the occasion of his 100th birthday—from a writer whose transgressive legacy and raw, funny, acutely observant writing have left a vivid markIlluminated by a resonant voice and conjuring the desperation and absurdity of being human, the perceptive poetry of Charles Bukowski transcends its particular moment to speak to us as forcefully today as when it was written. Taking on a wide range of subjects—from love to death to sex to writing—Bukowski’s unvarnished poetry touches on enduring concerns while remaining sharply aware of the day-to-day. Collected on the occasion of his 100th birthday, these poems present the classic Bukowski, speaking to the deepest longings and strangest facets of the human experience. Granular yet expansive, this is tough, unrelenting poetry touched by grace.