Diversify Your Shelves: Poetry

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY RECOMMENDATION

Flèche (the French word for 'arrow') is an offensive technique commonly used in fencing, a sport of Mary Jean Chan's young adult years, when she competed locally and internationally for her home city, Hong Kong. This cross-linguistic pun presents the queer, non-white body as both vulnerable ('flesh') and... Read more »

Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award

Jericho Brown's daring book The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human:... Read more »

If They Come for Us

“Raw, but not unpolished. Dripping with sadness and honey. Rage beyond anger, a lesson in history and violence. A comprehensible example of otherness in America for those who haven’t experienced it; for those who don’t know they’re perpetuating it. An honest portrayal of a life shaped by governments’ omissions, of the lies of the self and others, and of waking to the daylight, the promise held in sunshine, and in finding one’s own voice, own words, own way of telling one’s own story.”

BrocheAroe, River Dog Book Co.

A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land.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... Read more »

The instant #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller


The breakout poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman

Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet... Read more »

Black Girl, Call Home

“This collection. Have you ever closed a book and suddenly felt that all that you are, all that you've seen has somehow been made tangible through another's voice? Have you ever felt called in to let go, to be heard, and to be seen? That is what Mans has done here. I will forever hold onto the beautiful ways in which Jasmine pulls apart and gives life to the tiny variables which contribute to the formulation of one's blackness, queerness, and womanhood. ”

Deidre, WORD Bookstores

Time Is a Mother

“I was stunned by Vuong’s gorgeous prose and raw revelations. Time is a Mother was an intense experience. The audiobook is less that two hours, but I have spent days thinking about Vuong’s words. I highly recommend this incredible poetry collection.”

Karen, Tattered Cover