National Poetry Month 2025 - Books for Adults

Updated March 26, 2025
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100 poems to break your heart
Hirsch, Edward
Paper Book
100 of the most moving and inspiring poems of the last 200 years from around the world, a collection that will comfort and enthrall anyone trapped by grief or loneliness, selected by the award-winning, best-selling, and beloved author of How to Read a Poem Implicit in poetry is the...
[...]: Poems
Joudah, Fady
Paper Book
Finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry Winner of the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize A Reading the West Book Award Finalist From one of our most...
An American sunrise : poems
Harjo, Joy
Paper Book
In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family's lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise, Harjo...
The annotated Emerson
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Paper Book
A brilliant essayist and a master of the aphorism ("Our moods do not believe in each other"; "Money often costs too much"), Emerson has inspired countless writers. He challenged Americans to shut their ears against Europe's "courtly muses" and to forge a new, distinctly American cultural identity...
Bluff : poems
Smith, Danez
Paper Book
FINALIST FOR THE 2025 PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY FINALIST FOR THE 2024 NAACP IMAGE AWARD FOR POETRY FINALIST FOR THE 2025 ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY WINNER OF THE 2025 MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY Written after two years of artistic silence,...
Context Collapse: A Poem Containing a History of Poetry
Ruby, Ryan
Paper Book
Literary critic Ryan Ruby uncovers the secret history of poetry in a mock-academic verse essay filled with wit and wisdom. One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2024 Prophet. Entertainer. Courtier. Criminal. Revolutionary. Critic. Scholar. Nobody. Epic in...
Don't call us dead : poems
Smith, Danez
Paper Book
Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection "[Smith's] poems are enriched to the point of volatility, but they pay out, often, in sudden joy."--The New Yorker Award-winning poet Danez Smith is...
Forest of Noise : Poems
Toha, Mosab Abu
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * "A powerful, capacious, and profound" (Ocean Vuong) new collection of poems about life in Gaza by an acclaimed Palestinian poet and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer You are alive for a moment when living...
If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose
Alareer, Refaat
Paper Book
"If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale." This rich, elegiac compilation of work from the late Palestinian poet and professor, Refaat Alareer, brings together his marvelous poetry and deeply human writing about literature, teaching, politics, and family. The renowned...
Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves
Lanham, J. Drew
Paper Book
From J. Drew Lanham, MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient and author of Sparrow Envy: A Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts, comes a sensuous new collection in his signature mix of poetry and prose. In gorgeous and timely pieces, Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves is a lush journey into...
Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (Loa #382)
Gonzalez, Rigoberto
Paper Book
***Top pick for Hispanic Heritage Month by NYT best-selling author Elizabeth Acevedo for Good Morning America*** This landmark Latinx poetry collection offers "a wondrous journey through the passions, the ideas, and the diversity of a people redefining what it means to be American"...
The Moon That Turns You Back
Alyan, Hala
Paper Book
From the author of The Arsonists' City and The Twenty-Ninth Year, a new collection of poetry that traces the fragmentation of memory, archive, and family-past, present, future-in the face of displacement and war. A diaspora of memories runs through this poetry collection--a...
Rangikura : poems
Tibble, Tayi
Paper Book
A fiery second collection of poetry from the acclaimed Indigenous New Zealand writer that U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo calls, "One of the most startling and original poets of her generation." Tayi Tibble returns on the heels of her incendiary debut with a bold new follow-up....
Shakespeare's poems : Venus and Adonis, the rape of Lucrece, and the shorter poems
Shakespeare, William
Paper Book
In 1593 Shakespeare awoke and found himself famous. Lines from his comic, erotic, tragic poem Venus and Adonis were on everyone's lips.The appearance in 1594 of the darkly reflective and richly descriptive Rape of Lucrece confirmed his fame as 'Sweet Master Shakespeare', Elizabethan England's most...
Song of my softening
James, Omotara
Paper Book
A Finalist for a 2025 NAACP Image Award (Outstanding Literary Work - Poetry) The raw poems inside Song of My Softening study the ever-changing relationship with oneself, while also investigating the relationship that the world and nation has with Black queerness. ...
Things you may find hidden in my ear : poems from Gaza
Abu Toha, Mosab
Paper Book
Winner of the American Book Award, the Palestine Book Award and Arrowsmith Press's 2023 Derek Walcott Poetry Prize National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry Finalist "Written from his native Gaza, Abu Toha's accomplished...
This is the honey : an anthology of contemporary Black poets
Alexander, Kwame
Paper Book
In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of anthems for our time, at turns tender and piercing, and deeply inspiring throughout. Featuring work from well-loved poets such as Claudia Rankine, Ross Gay, Jericho Brown,...
Wade in the water : poems
Smith, Tracy K.
Paper Book
Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection The extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States Even the men in black armor, the ones Jangling...
Water, Water: Poems
Collins, Billy
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * From the former Poet Laureate of the United States and New York Times bestselling author of Aimless Love comes a wondrous new collection of poems focused on the joys and mysteries of daily life. "Among the best poems that [Billy] Collins has...
A year of last things : poems
Ondaatje, Michael
Paper Book
From one of the most influential writers of his generation, a gorgeously surprising poetry collection about memory, history, and the act of looking back Following several of his internationally acclaimed novels, A Year of Last Things is Michael Ondaatje's long-awaited...
You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World
Limon, Ada
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Big Reads Selection A 2024 NPR "Books We Love" Selection "Whoever you are, you will find yourself and your own world in the expansiveness of this collection." -Margaret Renkl, New York Times ...

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