Books and beyond

Celebrate National Poetry Month with poetry books from the library. Here are some of my favorites:

 

New and Selected Poems,by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver is a powerful poet. Oliver regularly writes about nature and animals with a frequent focus on the preciousness and fleeting nature of life. The following poems in this collection are particularly worth the read: "When Death Comes," "The Sun," "Singapore," "Wild Geese," and "The Ponds."

 

Interesting Tidbit: Mary Oliver won the National Book Award in 1992 for New and Selected Poems. She also won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1984 for American Primitive, which is included in New and Selected Poems.    

 

101 Famous Poems,complied by Roy J. Cook

101 Famous Poems brings together well-known and well-loved poems in addition to historic speeches and documents. Roy J. Cook includes poems like "The Raven," by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Builders," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Mending Wall," by Robert Frost and "Renascence," by Edna St. Vincent Millay. He also includes The Gettysburg Address, The Declaration of Independence, and The War Inevitable by Patrick Henry. 101 Famous Poems is an impressive collection for anyone who likes poetry or thinks they might like it.      

 

Americans’ Favorite Poems edited by Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the US in 1997, put out a call to poetry lovers: send me your favorite poem and a letter explaining why it is your favorite. The result is Americans’ Favorite Poems. Pinsky includes an excerpt of each letter before the poem it praises. I like this book because you can read the poem and then read the letter, which allows you to see the poems in a new way.   Pinsky also gives the reader a diverse array of poems to read.  Here are some examples: "One Art," by Elizabeth Bishop; "Everything the Power of the World does in done in a circle," by Black Elk; "Jabberwocky," by Lewis Carroll; "Mother to Son," by Langston Hughes; and "Equal to the gods," by Sappho. 

 

Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest,by B. H. Fairchild