English Poetry

Playwright, poet, and novelist Ntozake Shange originally composed for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf in as a mesmerizingly original choreopoem. The New York Post called it "rich with the author's special voice: by turns bitter, funny, ironic, and savage; fiercely honest and personal." Now a new audiobook, it chronicles the interconnected lives of a group of women facing shatteringly difficult issues, and evokes the indomitable power of enduring hope and joy.

From Instagram phenomenon Whitney Hanson, a revised edition of her bestselling Climate, now with a new introduction and more than a dozen new poems i don’t worry about the weather anymore when it rains, i dance when the sun shines, i dance through it all, i will dance —from Climate Honest...

Hailed as one of “Oprah’s Ultimate Favorite Things,” Mark Nepo’s bestselling “thinking person’s devotional” of inspirational stories and essays is now available from S&S Audio. In this work, Mark Nepo invites listeners to explore their own inner core through the stories of ordinary...

The James Joyce Collection includes Joyce's 2 most celebrated novels, short fiction from Dubliners, and a selection of his poetry. Read by a wonderful Irish cast of Aoife McMahon, Aidan Kelly, and Stephen Hogan.

The little red hen finds none of the lazy barnyard animals willing to help her plant, harvest, or grind wheat into flour, but all are eager to eat the bread she makes from it.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER For fans of Rupi Kaur and Cleo Wade, this first collection of poetry from the viral TikTok poet Josie Balka evokes themes of nostalgia, love, envy, and hope, speaking to the universal longings that live deep in our souls. I’ve never seen anyone at a public...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Grammy Award–nominated, platinum-selling musician Halsey is heralded as one of the most compelling voices of their generation. In I Would Leave Me If I Could, they reveal never-before-seen poetry of longing, love, and the nuances of bipolar disorder. In this debut...

Performed by Jim Morrison, Patti Smith, Liz Phair, Oliver Ray, Tom Robbins, Frank Lisciandro, Anne Morrison Chewning, Sefton Graham, and Ian Morrison. Includes Jim Morrison’s final poetry recording, now available for the first time, at the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles on his 27th...

I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life can not matter. The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric and the essay in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America.

Edited by The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, a celebratory selection from one hundred years of short stories in the magazine which has been the most influential and important showcase for the form and has launched dozens of stellar careers in fiction There is simply no A–Z like...

Journey through this collection of small poems as the author recounts her teenage and college years, each line detailing a young woman's adventure through life, love, faith, and loss.

"The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without," Diane Seuss writes in this brilliant, candid work, her most personal collection to date. These poems tell the story of a life at risk of spilling over the edge of the page, from Seuss's working-class childhood in rural Michigan to the dangerous allures of New York City and back again. With sheer virtuosity, Seuss moves nimbly across thought and time, poetry and punk, AIDS and addiction, Christ and motherhood, showing us what we can do, what we can do without, and what we offer to one another when we have nothing left to spare.

Talking While Female & Other Dangerous Acts is a fresh collection of original short stories on themes of risk and resilience, written and performed by Latina womxn across the USA. Curated by Teatro Luna West: America's All Latinx and All Women of Color Theatre Ensemble, these stunning stories are combined with original music by Maria Chavez and poetry by Gabriela Ortega in order to fully transport the listener to each individual life and journey.

John Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems in the English language. It tells the story of the Fall of Man, a tale of immense drama and excitement, of rebellion and treachery, of innocence pitted against corruption, in which God and Satan fight a bitter battle for control of mankind's destiny.

A rich and varied collection of contemporary short stories, extracts from novels, and poetry that will go a long way toward informing the English-speaking world of the latest developments in Iranian literature. This sampling - or to use the Farsi term golchine, a bouquet - provides a window onto an important but sorely neglected segment of world culture. We hope it will also serve to awaken further interest in the work and in translations of Iranian novelists and poets.

From the bestselling author Judith Viorst comes a witty and poignant exploration of the joys and sorrows of life’s twilight years—one that leaves us laughing, pondering, and grateful for the moments we have left. In a career that has spanned more than fifty years, Judith Viorst has...

Each of the 18 kids in Mr. Ward's inner city classroom has something important to say, but some don't even realize it. Then Mr. Ward begins to have "open mic" poetry slams once a month on Fridays. Young adult listeners will identify with the characters in Bronx Masquerade as they explore questions about life and self-expression.

Published in their entirety, Sylvia Plath's journals provide an intimate portrait of the writer who was to produce in the last seven months of her life some of the most extraordinary poems of the 20th century. Faithfully transcribed from the 23 journals and journal fragments owned by Smith College, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath includes two journals that Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, unsealed just before his death in 1998.

The Iliad is one of the most enduring creations of Western Civilization and was originally written to be recited or chanted to the accompaniment of various instruments. Properly performed, this work today is just as meaningful, just as powerful, and just as entertaining as it was in the ninth century BC, and it casts its spell upon modern listeners with the same raw intensity as it did upon the people of ancient times.

Dick Davis—“our pre-eminent translator from the Persian” (The Washington Post)—has revised and expanded his acclaimed translation of Ferdowsi’s masterpiece, adding more than 100 pages of newly translated text. Davis’s elegant combination of prose and verse allows the poetry of the Shahnameh to sing its own tales directly, interspersed sparingly with clearly marked explanations to ease along modern audiences.