Poetry and Novels-in-Verse

Playing Books & Bites Bingo? Try these books of poetry or novels-in-verse.

Updated January 22, 2025
Jessamine County Public Library Books and Bites
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In her powerful debut, former Asbury University professor Kristina Erny questions whether sustenance will come in the desert places in her faith and what it might mean to journey forward anyway. In meditations set within imagery in 1 Kings, Erny borrows the voices of long-dead prophets, widows, and ravens to explore her own contemporary faith-life, becoming the angel nudging herself forward.

The Poet X
Acevedo, Elizabeth
Paper Book
Winner of the National Book AwardWinner of the Michael L. Printz AwardWinner of the the Pura Belpré AwardXiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.But Xiomara...
Light for the world to see
Alexander, Kwame
Paper Book
From NPR correspondent and New York Times bestselling author, Kwame Alexander, comes a powerful and provocative collection of poems that cut to the heart of the entrenched racism and oppression in America and eloquently explores ongoing events.   A book in the tradition of James...
What kind of woman : poems
Baer, Kate
Paper Book
An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller A Goop Book Club Pick "If you want your breath to catch and your heart to stop, turn to Kate Baer."--Joanna Goddard, Cup of Jo A stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships of being...
A small porch : Sabbath poems 2014 and 2015 together with The presence of nature in the natural world
Berry, Wendell
Paper Book
"Thoreau would be gratified . . . Here are Sabbath Poems that praise the given life."--Lexington Herald-Leader "[Berry's poems] shine with a gentle wisdom of a craftsman who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and wonder of life." --The Christian Science...
The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded : poems
Brown, Molly McCully
Paper Book
Haunted by thevoices of those committed to the notorious Virginia State Colony, epicenter ofthe American eugenics movement in the first half of the twentieth century, thisevocative debut marks the emergence of a poet of exceptional poise andcompassion, who grew up in the shadow of the Colony itself.
Wrong Norma
Carson, Anne
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST POETRY BOOK OF 2024 FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY Published here in a stunning edition with images created by Carson, several of the twenty-five startling poetic prose pieces have appeared in magazines and journals like The New Yorker and...
Obit : poems
Chang, Victoria
Paper Book
The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2020 Time Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 NPR's Best Books of 2020 National Book Award in Poetry, Longlist Frank Sanchez Book Award After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to...
Catalog of unabashed gratitude
Gay, Ross
Paper Book
Winner, 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, poetry category Winner, 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize Finalist, 2015 National Book Award, poetry category Finalist, 2015 NAACP Image Awards, poetry category ...
Dear Mothman
Gow, Robin
Paper Book
Halfway through sixth grade, Noah's best friend and the only other trans boy in his school, Lewis, passed away in a car accident. Lewis was adventurous and curious, always bringing a new paranormal story to share with Noah. Together they daydreamed about cryptids and shared discovering their genders...
Studies of familiar birds
Green, Carrie
Paper Book
Carrie Green's Studies of Familiar Birds reflects upon the series of nest-and-egg illustrations that Virginia Jones saw to completion after her daughter, who had begun the project, died. The artist's loss in the late nineteenth century is presented in tandem with the poet's artistic...
Conflict resolution for holy beings : poems
Harjo, Joy
Paper Book
A musical, magical, resilient volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States. In these poems, the joys and struggles of the everyday are played against the grinding politics of being human. Beginning in a hotel room in the dark of a distant city, we travel...
The hurting kind : poems
Limón, Ada
Paper Book
An astonishing collection about interconnectedness--between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves--from National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist and U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. "I have always been too...
You are here : poetry in the natural world
Limón, 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 ...
Whereas
Long Soldier, Layli
Paper Book
Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry WHEREAS her birth signaled the responsibility as mother to teach what it is to be Lakota therein the question: What did I know about being Lakota? Signaled panic, blood rush my embarrassment. What did I know of our language...
The common man
Manning, Maurice
Paper Book
The Common Man, Maurice Manning's fourth collection, is a series of ballad-like narratives, set down in loose, unrhymed iambic tetrameter, that honors the strange beauty of the Kentucky mountain country he knew as a child, as well as the idiosyncratic adventures and personalities of the...
Ultima thule
McCombs, Davis
Paper Book
2000 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for Poetry   This year's winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Davis McCombs's Ultima Thule, which was acclaimed as "a book of exploration, of searching regard.... a grave,...
Swan : poems and prose poems
Oliver, Mary
Paper Book
"Joy is not made to be a crumb," writes Mary Oliver, and certainly joy abounds in her new book of poetry and prose poems. Swan, her twentieth volume, shows us that, though we may be "made out of the dust of stars," we are of the world she captures here so vividly: the acorn that hides...
Into the Forest and All the Way Through
Pelayo, Cynthia
Paper Book
Nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection Into The Forest And All The Way Through is a collection of true crime poetry that explores the cases of over one hundred missing and murdered women in the United States. "This book shook me,...
Two brown dots
Quintos, Danni
Paper Book
Selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, Danni Quintos carves a space for brown girls and weird girls in her debut collection of poems. Two Brown Dots explores what it means to be a racially ambiguous, multiethnic, Asian American...
Long way down
Reynolds, Jason
Paper Book
"An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger." --Booklist (starred review) "Astonishing." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "A tour de force." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta...
Customs : poems
Sharif, Solmaz
Paper Book
Winner of the 2023 CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry Winner of the 2023 Northern California Book Award for Poetry Finalist for the 2023 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Finalist for the 2022 L.A. Times Book Prize for Poetry Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award<...
Incarnadine : poems
Szybist, Mary
Paper Book
Winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry * An NPR, Slate, Oregonian, Kansas City Star, Willamette Week, and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * Amazon's Best Book of the Year in Poetry 2013 * In Incarnadine, Mary...
Monument : poems : new and selected
Trethewey, Natasha D.
Paper Book
Urgent new poems on race and gender inequality, and select poems drawing upon Domestic Work, Bellocq's Ophelia, Native Guard, Congregation, and Thrall, from two-time U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey. Layering joy and urgent defiance--against...
Night sky with exit wounds
Vuong, Ocean
Paper Book
The New Yorker, The Best Books of Poetry of 2016 New York Times, Critics Pick Boston Globe, Best Books listing Miami Herald, Best LGBTQ Books San Francisco Chronicle, Top 100 Books of the Year Library Journal, Best Books of 2016 "There is a powerful emotional...
Load in nine times : poems
Walker, Frank X.
Paper Book
For decades, Frank X Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry: from Medgar Evers in Turn Me Loose, winner of the NAACP Award; to York, the enslaved explorer who joined the Lewis and Clark expedition, in Buffalo Dance, winner of the Lillian Smith...
Perfect Black
Wilkinson, Crystal
Paper Book
2022 NAACP Image Award Winner Crystal Wilkinson combines a deep love for her rural roots with a passion for language and storytelling in this compelling collection of poetry and prose about girlhood, racism, and political awakening, imbued with vivid imagery of growing up in...
The girl singer : poems
Worthington, Marianne
Paper Book
Feminism, Appalachian culture, and country music: three threads beautifully woven into one in Marianne Worthington's poetry collection The Girl Singer. The poet grew up in urban Appalachia, listening to country and folk music and letting it live within her. The speakers in The...
African American poetry : 250 years of struggle & song
Young, Kevin
Paper Book
A literary landmark- the biggest, most ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the present Across a turbulent history, from such vital centers as Harlem, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, Black...
Poetry unbound : 50 poems to open your world
Ó Tuama, Padraig
Paper Book
In the tumult of our contemporary moment, poetry has emerged as an inviting, consoling outlet with a unique power to move and connect us, to inspire fury, tears, joy, laughter, and surprise. This generous anthology pairs fifty illuminating poems with poet and podcast host Pádraig Ó Tuama's...

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