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 From one of our most acclaimed contemporary writers, an urgent and essential collection of...
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...
Bluff : poems
Smith, Danez
Paper Book
Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith's powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and...
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...
Don't read poetry : a book about how to read poems
Burt, Stephanie
Paper Book
An award-winning poet offers a brilliant introduction to the joys--and challenges--of the genre In Don't Read Poetry, award-winning poet and literary critic Stephanie Burt offers an accessible introduction to the seemingly daunting task of...
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 award-winning Palestinian poet. You are alive for a moment when living people run after you.<...
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
There are a brilliant array of contemporary voices here as well, spinning out the tapestry of Latino poetry in daring new directions. Taking the measure of this current renaissance, the anthology culminates with the most comprehensive survey of twenty-first century Latino poetry yet published....
Light Me Down : The New & Collected Poems of Jean Valentine
Valentine, Jean/ Macari, Anne Marie (FRW)
Paper Book
Multi-award winner, including a National Book Award, Jean Valentine published twelve full-length collections of poetry during her lifetime, and all of them--plus an entirely new, unpublished manuscript--can be found in this masterful collection of her life's work.  ...
A Little Daylight Left: Poems
Kay, Sarah
Paper Book
A vulnerable, searching collection about facing the beautiful & difficult parts of our humanness with compassion & wonder "This is a book that will make you feel simultaneously alive and less alone."--Hanif Abdurraqib, New York Timesbestselling author of There's...
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...
Promises of gold = Promesas de oro
Olivarez, Josae
Paper Book
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Named one of NPR's Books We Love "How many bad lovers have gotten poems? How many crushes? No disrespect to romantic love--but what about our friends ? Those homies who are there all...
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....
So far so good : final poems, 2014-2018
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Paper Book
"Ursula K. Le Guin, loved by millions for her fantasy and science-fiction novels, ponders life, death and the vast beyond in So Far So Good, an astute, charming collection finished weeks before her death in January, 2018. Fans will recognize some of the motifs here--cats, wind, strong women -...
Something about Living: National Book Award Winner
Khalaf Tuffaha, Lena
Paper Book
2025 ALA Notable Book Winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry Winner of the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize It's nearly impossible to write poetry that holds the human desire for joy and the insistent agitations of protest at the same time, but Lena Khalaf Tuffaha's...
The sun and her flowers
Kaur, Rupi
Paper Book
Watch rupi kaur live now on Prime Video. "Rupi Kaur is the Writer of the Decade." -- The New Republic From rupi kaur, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of milk and honey, comes her long-awaited second collection of poetry....
Things you may find hidden in my ear : poems from Gaza
Abu Toha, Mosab
Paper Book
Winner of the Palestine Book Award and the American Book Award  National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry Finalist Shortlisted for the 2022 Walcott Poetry Prize "Written from his native Gaza, Abu Toha's accomplished debut contrasts...
This is the honey : an anthology of contemporary Black poets
Alexander, Kwame
Paper Book
A breathtaking poetry collection on hope, heart, and heritage from the most prominent and promising Black poets and writers of our time, edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author Kwame Alexander. In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology,...
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...
Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years
Harjo, Joy
Paper Book
Over a long, influential career in poetry, Joy Harjo has been praised for her "warm, oracular voice" (John Freeman, Boston Globe) that speaks "from a deep and timeless source of compassion for all" (Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR). Her poems are musical, intimate, political, and wise, intertwining...
Woke up no light / Poems
Mottley, Leila
Paper Book
A poignant, rousing debut book of poetry, full of life, from the former Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland, California woke up no light is a Black girl's saunter turned to a woman's defiant strut. These are the hymns of a new generation of poetry. Young, alive, yearning. A...
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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