April is National Poetry Month, and our Chief Poetry Officer has hand-selected one book from a living poet for each day of the month. Check out the celebrated new collections, essential new-and-selecteds, crackling new debuts, and cross-genre experiments. These titles span the full range of what contemporary poetry can do. Enjoy!
Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems by Patricia Smith
Scribner Book Company
"A collection of the finest new and selected poems from one of the most groundbreaking voices in contemporary poetry, a "masterful performer and poet of voices too little heard" (Poetry Foundation)."
A Suit or a Suitcase: Poems by Maggie Smith
Washington Square Press
"Instant New York Times bestselling author and poet Maggie Smith returns with a new collection of poems on the sometimes-blurry distinction between mind and body, and how the self shifts and moves through time and space."
Worth Burning by Mickie Kennedy
Black Lawrence Press
"A searing portrait of survival, Worth Burning traces a boy's journey from a turbulent Southern childhood—marked by parental abuse, death, and hidden queerness—through the AIDS crisis, a marriage of convenience, and finally, towards a rugged self-acceptance haunted by the past."
Be Easy: New and Selected Poems by Adrian Matejka
Liveright Publishing Corporation
"Gathering hits from six extraordinary collections, Be Easy showcases his singular sonics and narrative vision in fresh, dynamic poems that lyrically complicate place, race, and identity."
The Bronze Arms: Poems by Richie Hofmann
Knopf Publishing Group
"Following his captivating and popular A Hundred Lovers, Hofmann's new collection is a queer coming-of-age, tinged with myth: poems that bring us into a fever dream of antiquity and desire at its limits."
Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times by Tracy K. Smith
W. W. Norton & Company
"Drawing on deep passion and personal experience, former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith demystifies the art form that has too often been mischaracterized as "inaccessible," "irrelevant," or "intimidating.""
Scorched Earth: Poems by Tiana Clark
Washington Square Press
"Dive between the borders of ruined and radical love with this lyrical poetry collection that explores topics as expansive as divorce, the first Black Bachelorette, and the art world."
Someone Else's Hunger by Isabella DeSendi
Four Way Books
"Dislocated in her own skin after a sexual assault, Isabella DeSendi wrestles with the thorny border between desire and appetite in her incandescent debut collection."
New Economy by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Copper Canyon Press
"The New Economy memorializes the world's pleasures and perils told through the point of view of an aging, ungendered body—a devotional to the ungendered vessel as it ages, dreams, and survives."
Becoming Ghost: Poetry by Cathy Linh Che
Washington Square Press
"Becoming Ghost documents Cathy Linh Che's parents' experiences as refugees who escaped the Vietnam War and then were cast as extras in Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, placing them at the margins of their own story."
I Do Know Some Things by Richard Siken
Copper Canyon Press
"I Do Know Some Things is a brave book, both in content and method. It is brave to write about childhood scars and the heartbreak the dead leave behind. It is brave to reconfigure one's life in the aftermath of a stroke."
Replica by Lisa Low
University of Wisconsin Press
"In poignant, witty poems, Lisa Low navigates the tensions of solidarity and hostility in white spaces as she sets out to write differently about race."
New and Selected Poems by Marie Howe
W. W. Norton & Company
"Marie Howe's poetry transforms penetrating observations of everyday life into sacred, humane miracles."
Exit Opera: Poems by Kim Addonizio
W. W. Norton & Company
"Set in locations from dive bars to Montparnasse Cemetery, from an ancient Greek temple to a tourist shop in Assisi, Exit Opera explores the ever-vexing issues of time, mortality, love, and loss, and considers the roles of art and human connection."
Night Owl: Poems by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Ecco Press
"Aimee Nezhukumatathil plumbs the depths of nighttime, crafting a series of nocturnes that explore the magic, sensuality, and life that emerge as the rest of the world goes to bed."
Stay Dead by Natalie Shapero
Copper Canyon Press
"The politics of labor and performance collide with comedy and tragedy in Natalie Shapero's fourth poetry collection, Stay Dead."
Death Does Not End at the Sea by Gbenga Adesina
University of Nebraska Press
"In Gbenga Adesina's groundbreaking debut book of poems, a defiant and wise exploration of exile, voyages, and spiritual odysseys, we encounter figures embarking on journeys haunted by war, by a hunger for meaning, and by the sea's great indifference."
Cold Thief Place by Esther Lin
Alice James Books
"Cold Thief Place speaks of the experiences of an undocumented American, her parents who fled Communist China and found safety in fundamentalist Christianity, and how she tried to understand them and herself by way of confessional poems."
Death of the First Idea: Poems by Rickey Laurentiis
Knopf Publishing Group
"From Whiting Award-winner Rickey Laurentiis, a mythic, lyric, decade-in-the-making new collection of masterful poems that probe the meanings of trans/formation and re-creation, a new classic about gender and love."
Terror Counter by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi
Deep Vellum Publishing
"TERROR COUNTER is a debut collection of poems which acts against the many languages—interpersonal, legal, literary, rhetorical—constricting the lives and meanings of Palestinians."
Dog Show: Poems by Billy Collins
Random House
"Billy Collins's Dog Show celebrates the joy of our canine best friends, honoring the love we feel for the animals who play such vital roles in our lives."
Startlement: New and Selected Poems by Ada Limón
Milkweed Editions
"An essential collection spanning nearly twenty years of emphatic, fearlessly original poetry from one of America's most celebrated living writers."
Kitchen Hymns by Pádraig Ó Tuama
Copper Canyon Press
"The poems of Kitchen Hymns are finely honed melodies of survival—shaped with both humor and anger, force and conviction."
America, a Love Story by Camille T. Dungy
Wesleyan University Press
"America, A Love Story is Camille T. Dungy's powerful testament to living and loving as a Black woman and mother in today's America, and her first book of poetry in almost a decade."
Trading Riffs to Slay Monsters: Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa & Laren McClung
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
"A witty and searching collaborative poetic work composed during the pandemic, the result is a work that is at once a document of the poets' inner and outer worlds and an extended meditation on what poetry can do."
No More Worlds to Conquer: The Black Poet in Washington, DC by Brian Gilmore
Georgetown University Press
"Brian Gilmore uncovers the buried legacy of Black poets in Washington, tracing the literary life and politics of Black poets in the nation's capital since Paul Laurence Dunbar."
Maybe the Body: Poems by Asa Drake
Tin House
"Asa Drake witnesses firsthand the conflicts between art and patriotism, labor and longing, reaching for the lush landscapes of the Philippines and the American South as she traces the lineage of a body shaped by economic, ecological, and political dissonance."
How about Now: Poems by Kate Baer
Harper Perennial
""How About Now is a balm, a banister, and a battering ram. Her very best yet." —Catherine Newman"
Horses by Jake Skeets
Milkweed Editions
"Navajo Nation Poet Laureate Jake Skeets's highly anticipated second collection patiently tracks the impacts of climate change on the land and its myriad inhabitants."
Into the Hush by Arthur Sze
Copper Canyon Press
"With imaginative power and emotional force, Into the Hush explores the exigencies of climate change, of endangered cultures, and of our nuclear age."
Breathing Room: Poems of Rest and Retreat by James Crews
Mandala Publishing
"James Crews' newest poetry collection gives readers permission to find the pause in every moment and cultivate healing from a sense of everyday awe for nature, each other, and our fractured world."
Haha... it's actually 31. We threw in an extra one, just in case something was out of stock.
