As we head into summer, we encourage you to check out these poetry titles from our partners, sponsors, and advertisers. Buying poetry books is still one of the best ways to directly support poets and poetry publishers. Happy summer reading!
2021 Summer Poetry Reading List
I’ll Fly Away by Rudy Francisco
Button Poetry, December 2020
I’ll Fly Away uses Francisco’s invented lexicon as the palette to paint an intimate portrait of Black life in America ― one that praises joy without shying away from the hard truths confronting us today.
Places We Return To: A Celebration of Twenty Years Publishing Fine Literature edited by Joan Cusack Handler & Gabriel Cleveland
CavanKerry Press, December 2020
CavanKerry Press has published fine literature exploring the emotional and psychological landscape of what it means to be human through insightful, accessible writing since 2000. This unique collection celebrates our first 104 deeply resonant books.
Funeral Diva by Pamela Sneed
City Lights Books, October 2020
2021 Lambda Award Winner for Lesbian Poetry
“Sneed's Funeral Diva is deft, defiant, and devastating . . . Through her brilliant mind it's evident that everything is truly connected. You just have to find the string.” —Tommy Pico
The Essential June Jordan by June Jordan, ed. by Jan Heller Levi & Christoph Keller
Copper Canyon Press, May 2021
This definitive volume, featuring an afterword by Pulitzer Prize-winner Jericho Brown, distills the enduring legacy of a powerful voice for radical love and justice. June Jordan is a poet for the ages.
Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works by John Ashbery
Ecco, June 2021
A stunning collection of work from beloved poet John Ashbery, his first posthumous book.
Renditions by Reginald Gibbons
Four Way Books, February 2021
An energetic exploration of the expanse of language translated and otherwise transformed.
Lace & Pyrite by Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Get Fresh Books, LLC, April 2021
What began as an unprompted poem correspondence between the two poets in the late July swelter of 2011 blossomed into a beautiful collection of epistolary poetry.
Water / Music by Peter Filkins
Johns Hopkins University Press, April 2021
A diverse display of formal dexterity, narrative power, and lyrical resonance, Peter Filkins’s latest collection of poems explores the fraught relationship between the natural world and the human.
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song edited by Kevin Young
Library of America, October 2020
The most ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published, capturing this diverse tradition in a single indispensable volume and revealing its centrality and its challenge to American poetry and culture.
Measurable Terms by Arlyn LaBelle
The Main Street Rag, January 2021
Exploring four tonal seasons, Measurable Terms focuses on poetry as an act of intimacy, creating rich, vivid rooms for its readers to enter. It is unwaveringly attentive, skilled, brave, both harmed and—most beautifully—singing.
Worldly Things: Poems by Michael Kleber-Diggs
Milkweed Editions, June 2021
Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, Worldly Things is teeming with “supple, socially responsible poems [that] seem to me a triumphant, paradoxical, luminous response to a violent time in our history.” —Henri Cole
What Water Knows: Poems by Jacqueline Jones LaMon
Northwestern University Press, June 2021
LaMon’s stunning third collection shows the elements of life that unite us—and that separate us. This book transports the reader from drought to drowning, from the transatlantic Middle Passage to the breaking of water.
Wolf Lamb Bomb by Aviya Kushner
Orison Books, June 2021
Aviya Kushner, author of The Grammar of God, revives and reimagines the Book of Isaiah in her debut poetry collection, Wolf Lamb Bomb. These poems position the prophet Isaiah as a poet, crooner, and rival.
An Insomniac's Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe by Heidi Seaborn
[PANK] Books, June 2021
Winner of the PANK Books Poetry Prize, An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe is a stunning, middle-of-the-night poetic conversation with the Hollywood star that explores obsessions, objectification, love, marriage, work and death.
Shellback by Jeanne-Marie Osterman
Paloma Press, February 2021
The daughter of a WWII combat veteran remembers her father, from childhood days trying “to be his boy” to being his caregiver in old age. A portrait of love, forgiveness, and the tragedies of war.
The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Poet’s Memoir by Spencer Reece
Seven Stories, March 2021
A powerful dynamo of a story that delicately weaves the author's experiences with an appreciation for seven great literary touchstones: Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, James Merrill, Mark Strand, George Herbert, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Demystifications by Miranda Mellis
Solid Objects, June 2021
With humor and grace, bite and tenderness, these ninety-nine poems structure an archive of a Miranda Mellis mind map... “Demystifications is a key ring,” each page a passkey. —Lynn Marie Kirby
Listen My Friend, This Is the Dream I Dreamed Last Night by Cody-Rose Clevidence
The Song Cave, June 2021
Unlike anything we’ve ever seen, this is a book of wonder in which poet Cody-Rose Clevidence layers the language of information with the language of the heart, constantly locating the connections between attention and perception.
On the Mesa: An Anthology of Bolinas Writing (50th Anniversary Edition) edited by Ben Estes & Joel Weishaus
The Song Cave, April 2021
The Song Cave proudly presents an expanded edition of the long out of print City Lights Books classic On the Mesa: An Anthology of Bolinas Writing in celebration of its 50th anniversary.
Poetries by Georges Schehadé, translated by Austin Carder, introduction by Adonis
The Song Cave, June 2021
The first book-length English translation of works by this important Egyptian-born, Lebanese-French poet, Poetries presents the core of Georges Schehadé’s (1905-1989) œuvre, translated by Austin Carder, featuring an introduction by Adonis.
I am The Rage: A Black Poetry Collection by Dr. Martina McGowan
Sourcebooks, February 2021
For those who were inspired by Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb, I am The Rage is a visceral, written-in-the-moment collection of poetry that captures the raw emotion of being a Black woman in America over the last year.
How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope by James Crews
Storey Publishing, March 2021
This beautifully curated selection of more than 100 uplifting poems by well-known and emerging poets, including Amanda Gorman, Joy Harjo, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ross Gay, and Tracy K. Smith, invites gratitude and includes reflective prompts.
Divine Fire by David Woo
University of Georgia Press, March 2021
In Divine Fire, David Woo finds wisdom and spiritual sustenance in a time of crisis and uncertainty. He provides an astonishing vision of the world now through his exploration of themes of love, solitude, art, and death.
When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double by Diane DeCillis
Wayne State University Press, April 2021
This book takes us on a journey of what it means to be fully human and celebrates the beauty of our scars. These are love poems: to others, to the self, to the body.
Living Nations Living Words edited by Joy Harjo
W.W. Norton, May 2021
A powerful, moving anthology that celebrates the breadth of Native poets writing today, edited by U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo.