English Poetry

Throughout her illustrious career in letters, Maya Angelou gifted, healed, and inspired the world with her words. Now the beauty and spirit of those words live on in this new and complete collection of poetry that reflects and honors the writer’s remarkable life.

Renowned for his inventive mind, ambitious play with language, and dexterity with a wide range of tones and styles, John Ashbery has been a major artistic figure in the cultural life of our time. Parallel Movement of the Hands gathers unpublished, book-length projects and long poems written between 1993 and 2007, along with one (as yet) undated work, to showcase Ashbery’s diverse and multifaceted artistic obsessions and sources, such as children’s literature, cliff-hanger cinema reels, silent films, and classical music variations by Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny.

Published to great acclaim in 1873, Walter Pater’s compendium of idiosyncratic, impressionistic essays on the Renaissance gained him a reputation as a daring modern philosopher. Oscar Wilde called it the “holy writ of beauty.” It was Pater’s cry of “art for art’s sake” that became the manifesto for the aesthetic movement. He believed that art should be sensual and that beauty should rank as the highest ideal. Marked by elegant fluency, Pater’s essays discuss Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and other artists who, for him, embodied the spirit of the Renaissance.

These poems pause for the spectacle - cloning technologies, super-slo-mo photography, narcotic cab rides - to describe a system of tripwires, pitfalls, and decoys that the notion of daily viewership entails. These poems are paeans to our facility for duplicity and self-deception, in which the act of living is like a movie we're not in.

Tyler Knott Gregson is the original InstaPoet. With loyal fans across the country and all over the internet, he breathes new life into this ancient medium and delights fans with his openness and honesty. This new book will be his first poetry collection in four years, and he returns now with a message of hope. In his elegant and simple style, Gregson will lift your spirits, keep you going when times get tough, and remind you of the inherent inner strength you already have within you.

One of the finest German medieval epic poems, The Lay of the Nibelungs is perhaps best known now as one of the principal sources for Wagner’s four-part music drama The Ring of the Nibelung. It is easy to see how Wagner was enthralled by the story and the poetry for the power of the tale drives the narrative: intense love, loyalty, jealousy, murder, duty, honour and massacre are all interwoven into a classic.

Sophisticated wit and intense emotion, religious fervor and erotic sensuality, delight in life’s pleasures and fascination with death, are all to be found in the paradoxical poetry of John Donne. One of the foremost metaphysical poets, Donne’s ingenious metaphors and inspired use of language has earned him affection and reverence in near equal measure to Shakespeare.

Harold Bloom surveys with majestic view the literature of the West from the Old Testament to Samuel Beckett. He provocatively rereads the Yahwist (or "J") writer, Jeremiah, Job, Jonah, the Illiad, the Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, the Henry IV plays, Paradise Lost, Blake's Milton, Wordsworth's Prelude, and works by Freud, Kafka, and Beckett.

At last - here from the team behind the beloved international best seller comes a companion to Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site. All of our favorite trucks are back on the construction site - this time with a focus on team-building, friendship, and working together to make a big task seem small!

From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself - and us - home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America - and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman. Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.

Pay It Forward is a wondrous and moving story about Trevor McKinney, a 12-year-old boy in a small California town who accepts the challenge that his teacher gives his class, a chance to earn extra credit by coming up with a plan to change the world for the better - and to put that plan into action.

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, but more commonly known as just Byron, was a leading English poet in the Romantic mMovement along with Keats and Shelley. Byron was born on January 22nd, 1788. He was a great traveller across Europe, spending many years in Italy and much time in Greece. With his aristocratic indulgences and flamboyant style, along with his debts and a string of lovers, he was the constant talk of society.

The Iliad and The Odyssey are epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer, of which the written versions are dated to the 8th century BCE. Chronicling events in the Greek Bronze Age, this magnificent pair of poems forms the cornerstone of Western literature. If The Iliad is a classic war story, The Odyssey is symbolic of the individual’s journey through life.

The story of the adventures of the mythical hero Gilgamesh is the most considerable literary production that has come down to us from ancient Babylonia. Unfortunately, it was not preserved in complete form. This recording is of the fullest translation which had yet been issued in English when it was first published in 1917.

Three-time Christy Award winner Davis Bunn collaborates with the beloved Janette Oke to evoke the spirit of the original followers of the Way. In a first century Jerusalem seething with turmoil, religious and political leaders eye the burgeoning Christian community with suspicion. While a Hebrew merchant and a Roman soldier vie for the hand of a lovely follower of Christ, she finds her heart drawn to another whose tireless care and unflinching faith shine daily.

From the moment war broke out across Europe in 1914, the world entered a new, unparalleled era of modern warfare. Soldiers faced relentless machine gun shelling, incredible artillery power, flame throwers, and gas attacks. Within the first four months of the war, the British Army recorded the nervous collapse of ten percent of its officers; the loss of such manpower to mental illness left the army unable to fill its ranks. Soldiers Don't Go Mad tells for the first time the story of the soldiers and doctors who struggled with the effects of industrial warfare on the human psyche.

Down in the big construction site, tough trucks work with all their might. But now it's time to say goodnight! Little truck drivers will drift off to sleep to this soothing good-bye to the day.

Trigger warning—this book is about infant loss. Are you ready to even try to wrap your head around such a devastation? I lived through it. The words to say are still being written. I have edited dozens of books, and I still cannot reach the bottom of my emotions. This book exposes my broken heart with jaw-dropping honesty. I have defied my silence and shared my melanated story with eye-opening audacity.

In this journey of self-expression and self-exploration, Wakefield Brewster overcomes educational systems, addiction, and mental despair to deliver messages of hope, wellness, and pride in his blackness. In his own words, “In an odyssey of self awareness and societal association, I have crafted a deeper communion with the world around me.”

There are only two questions we have to answer in life – how to live and how to die. When we come to the end of the line, we all have to face death, our greatest enemy. But since my emergency cancer operation and chemotherapy, I now choose to face it on my own terms instead of just letting it happen. I will not only survive, I will l thrive. I am determined to prolong my life for as long as I can and to enjoy every moment to the fullest. This is my story in poetry. It is my reckoning with death and my journey into discovering the true meaning of life.