Poetry Collections to Try on Audio

Nikki Giovanni: Love Poems & A Good Cry

What We Learn From Tears and Laughter

By: Nikki Giovanni
Narrated by: Nikki Giovanni
Length: 2 hours 42 minutes

Hear Nikki Giovanni read two extraordinary collections of her own work! A singular listening experience! The poetry of Nikki Giovanni has spurred movements, turned hearts and informed generations. She’s been hailed as a firebrand, a radical, a healer, and a sage; a wise and courageous voice who has touched our national consciousness.Love Poems:... Read more

Tropic of Squalor

Poems

By: Mary Karr
Narrated by: Mary Karr
Length: 1 hour 7 minutes

A new volume of poetry from the New York Times bestselling and esteemed author of The Liar’s Club and Lit.Long before she earned accolades for her genre-defining memoirs, Mary Karr was winning poetry prizes. Now the beloved author returns with a collection of bracing poems as visceral and deeply felt and hilarious as her memoirs. In Tropic of... Read more

What Kind of Woman

Poems

By: Kate Baer
Narrated by: Kate Baer
Length: 1 hour 2 minutes

An Instant #1 New York Times BestsellerA 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 woman in the world today, and the many roles we play - mother, partner, and friend.“When life... Read more

God I Feel Modern Tonight

Poems from a Gal About Town

By: Catherine Cohen
Narrated by: Catherine Cohen
Length: 39 minutes

Poems of heartbreak and sex, self-care and self-critique, urban adventures and love on the road from the millennial queen and comedy sensation.

In these short, captivating lyrics, Catherine Cohen, the one-woman stand-up chanteuse who electrified the downtown NYC comedy scene in her white go-go boots, and who has been posting poignant,... Read more

At Blackwater Pond

Mary Oliver reads Mary Oliver

By: Mary Oliver
Narrated by: Mary Oliver
Length: 1 hour

Mary Oliver has published twenty-one volumes of poetry and six books of prose in the span of five decades, but she rarely performs her poetry in live readings. With At Blackwater Pond, Mary Oliver gives her audience what they've longed to hear: the poet's voice reading her own work. In this audio, she has recorded forty of her favorite poems,... Read more

This Wound Is a World

By: Billy-Ray Belcourt
Narrated by: Billy-Ray Belcourt
Length: 1 hour 5 minutes

Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut poetry collection, This Wound Is a World, is “a prayer against breaking,” writes trans Anishinaabe and Métis poet Gwen Benaway. “By way of an expansive poetic grace, Belcourt merges a soft beauty with the hardness of colonization to shape a love song that dances Indigenous bodies back into being. This book is what... Read more

Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

By: Emily Dickinson
Narrated by: Amy Landon
Length: 4 hours 21 minutes

Part of a new collection of literary voices from Gibbs Smith, written by, and for, extraordinary women—to encourage, challenge, and inspire.
One of American’s most distinctive poets, Emily Dickinson scorned the conventions of her day in her approach to writing, religion, and society. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers is a collection of her vast... Read more

Beowulf

By: Anonymous
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
Length: 2 hours 47 minutes

The earliest extant heroic epic in any European vernacular, Beowulf is considered the most important poem in Old English. The title character is a warrior of superhuman strength who accomplishes glorious deeds to honor his king. He also represents the ideal lord and vassal, generous to his own men while fulfilling all the forms of courtesy at... Read more

IRL

By: Tommy Pico
Narrated by: Tommy Pico
Length: 1 hour 45 minutes

⭐ Winner of the inaugural Brooklyn Public Library Literary Award

⭐ Finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award

IRL is a sweaty, summertime poem composed like a long text message, rooted in the epic tradition of A.R. Ammons, ancient Kumeyaay Bird Songs, and Beyoncé’s visual albums. It follows Teebs, a reservation-born, queer NDN... Read more

Homie

Poems

By: Danez Smith
Narrated by: Danez Smith
Length: 1 hour 32 minutes

Danez Smith is our president



Homie is Danez Smith's magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith's close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a... Read more