{"title":"Poetic Commons Book Club 2026","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis collection includes all the books in \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.mayacpopa.com\/home\"\u003eMaya C. Popa's\u003c\/a\u003e Poetic Commons Book Club. \"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOnce a month, we’ll gather to discuss a single poetry collection. Rather than evaluating a book’s success, I’m interested in what attentive reading offers us, and in what we gain by making room for different interpretations and points of view.\" You can sign up for online events at \u003ca title=\"Poetic Commons Book Club\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mayacpopa.com\/book-club\" target=\"_blank\"\u003emayacpopa.com\/book-club\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"american-sonnets-for-my-past-and-future-assassin","title":"American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin","description":"\u003cb\u003eFinalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNamed a Best American Poetry Book of the 21st Century (So Far) by \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eA powerful, timely, dazzling collection of sonnets from one of America's most acclaimed poets, Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eLighthead\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Sonnets that reckon with Donald Trump's America.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn seventy poems bearing the same title, Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, these poems are haunted by the country's past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares. Inventive, compassionate, hilarious, melancholy, and bewildered--the wonders of this new collection are irreducible and stunning.","brand":"Terrance Hayes","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793321590826,"sku":"9780143133186","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/american-sonnets-for-my-past-and-future-assassin-9133681.jpg?v=1762150761"},{"product_id":"new-economy","title":"New Economy","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e*2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Finalist*\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe New Economy\u003c\/em\u003e memorializes the world's pleasures and perils told through the point of view of an aging, ungendered body.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eA devotional to the ungendered vessel as it ages, dreams, and survives. A practice of radical collaboration, failure, and renewal. A world of \"Miss You\" poems opening a portal to all those we've lost and would love to visit for a while. In Gabrielle Calvocoressi's latest collection, \u003cem\u003eThe New Economy\u003c\/em\u003e, poems are haunted by the ghosts of loved ones and childhood memories, by changing landscapes and bodies. Calvocoressi's own figure is examined--investigating the desire to protect the body one is born with and the longing to have been born in another. Cisterns sing with the musicality of a poet who understands both the power of sound and silence--those quiet spaces inviting us to consider the words we cannot hear. \"The days I don't kill myself are extraordinary\" one poems says. \"Why don't we have a name for it?\" Lyrical and unafraid, \u003cem\u003eThe New Economy\u003c\/em\u003e invites us to name our fears and sorrows, to write to who or what has left us, to create practices that can hold both the darkness and light of this (in)finite life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gabrielle Calvocoressi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43797493153834,"sku":"9781556597213","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/new-economy-1415713.jpg?v=1762250598"},{"product_id":"lunch-poems","title":"Lunch Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEssential poems by the late New York poet.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLunch Poems\u003c\/em\u003e, first published in 1964 by City Lights Books as number nineteen in the Pocket Poets series, is widely considered to be Frank O'Hara's freshest and most accomplished collection of poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEdited by the poet in collaboration with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Donald Allen, who had published O'Hara's poems in his monumental \u003cem\u003eThe New American Poetry\u003c\/em\u003e in 1960, it contains some of the poet's best known works including \"The Day Lady Died,\" \"Ave Maria,\" and \"Poem\" [Lana Turner has collapsed!]. These are the compelling and formally inventive poems--casually composed, for example, in his office at The Museum of Modern Art, in the street at lunchtime or on the Staten Island Ferry en route to a poetry reading--that made O'Hara a dynamic leader of the \"New York School\" of poets.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"O'Hara speaks directly across the decades to our hopes and fears and especially our delights; his lines are as intimate as a telephone call. Few books of his era show less age.\"--\u003cstrong\u003eDwight Garner, \u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"As collections go, none brings . . . quality to the fore more than the thirty-seven \u003cem\u003eLunch Poems\u003c\/em\u003e, published in 1964 by City Lights.\"\u003cstrong\u003e--Nicole Rudick, \u003cem\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"What O'Hara is getting at is a sense of the evanescence, and the power, of great art, that inextricable contradiction -- that what makes it moving and transcendent is precisely our knowledge that it will pass away. This is the ethos at the center of \u003cem\u003eLunch Poems\u003c\/em\u003e: not the informal or the conversational for their own sake but rather in the service of something more intentional, more connective, more engaged.\" \u003cstrong\u003e--David L. Ulin, \u003cem\u003eLos Angeles TImes\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The collection broadcasts snark, exuberance, lonely earnestness, and minute-by-minute autobiography to a wide, vague audience--much like today's Twitter and Facebook feeds.\"\u003cstrong\u003e--Micah Mattix, \u003cem\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Sweet poems, funny, exhilarating, spontaneous, subversive, poignant, and sometimes--often--more deeply, even darkly moving. But above all sweet. Probably a greater proportion of O'Hara's poems can be read for sheer pleasure than the poems of any other 20th-century writer. This slim volume is his liveliest, most distilled and delectable single collection. Quintessential O'Hara, and such a bargain!\"--\u003cb\u003eLloyd Schwartz, Grolier Poetry Book Shop\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Frank O'Hara","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43806578245674,"sku":"9780872860353","price":8.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/lunch-poems-1210693.jpg?v=1762480910"},{"product_id":"blood-dazzler","title":"Blood Dazzler","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn minute-by-minute detail, Patricia Smith tracks Hurricane Katrina as it transforms into a full-blown mistress of destruction. From August 23, 2005, the day Tropical Depression Twelve developed, through August 28 when it became a Category Five storm with its \"scarlet glare fixed on the trembling crescent,\" to the heartbreaking aftermath, these poems evoke the horror that unfolded in New Orleans as America watched it on television.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAssuming the voices of flailing politicians, the dying, their survivors, and the voice of the hurricane itself, Smith follows the woefully inadequate relief effort and stands witness to families held captive on rooftops and in the Superdome. She gives voice to the thirty-four nursing home residents who drowned in St. Bernard Parish and recalls the day after their deaths when George W. Bush accompanied country singer Mark Willis on guitar: \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe cowboy grins through the terrible din, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e***\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnd in the Ninth, a choking woman wails\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLook like this country done left us for dead.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn unforgettable reminder that poetry can still be \"news that stays news,\" \u003ci\u003eBlood Dazzler \u003c\/i\u003eis a necessary step toward national healing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePatricia Smith \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of four previous collections of poetry, including \u003ci\u003eTeahouse of the Almighty\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of the Hurston\/Wright Legacy Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize. A record-setting, national poetry slam champion, she was featured in the film \u003ci\u003eSlamnation\u003c\/i\u003e, on the HBO series \u003ci\u003eDef Poetry Jam\u003c\/i\u003e, and is a frequent contributor to \u003ci\u003eHarriet\u003c\/i\u003e, the Poetry Foundation's blog. Visit her website at www.wordwoman.ws.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Patricia Smith","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43837429841962,"sku":"9781566892186","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/blood-dazzler-5192449.jpg?v=1763447339"},{"product_id":"sight-lines","title":"Sight Lines","description":"Sze, in drawing connections between the pastoral and the catastrophic, speaks to a contemporary condition in which we are constantly fragmented and made whole again as we are presented with a saturation of narratives. In his scenes of the quotidian, musings on life and death, and traversals between the natural and the artificial, Sze opens us to multitudinous lines of sight.","brand":"Arthur Sze","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43944614395946,"sku":"9781556595592","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/sight-lines-7884111.jpg?v=1767868692"},{"product_id":"map-to-the-stars","title":"Map to the Stars","description":"\u003cb\u003eA resonant new collection of poetry from Adrian Matejka, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Big Smoke\u003c\/i\u003e, a finalist for The Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eMap to the Stars\u003c\/i\u003e, the fourth poetry collection from National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Adrian Matejka, navigates the tensions between race, geography, and poverty in America during the Reagan Era. In the time of space shuttles and the Strategic Defense Initiative, outer space is the only place equality seems possible, even as the stars serve to both guide and obscure the earthly complexities of masculinity and migration. In Matejka's poems, hope is the link between the convoluted realities of being poor and the inspiring possibilities of transcendence and escape--whether it comes from \u003ci\u003eStar Trek\u003c\/i\u003e, the dream of being one of the first black astronauts, or Sun Ra's cosmic jazz.","brand":"Adrian Matejka","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43944722202666,"sku":"9780143130574","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/map-to-the-stars-9022042.jpg?v=1767955515"},{"product_id":"appalachian-sea-poems","title":"Appalachian Sea: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA New York Public Library Best Book of 2025\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSteve Scafidi's \u003ci\u003eThe Appalachian Sea\u003c\/i\u003e explores the eponymous place of mountains and story, of rivers and magic, as well as of mortality, where people work and live and die. What began as an homage to the American painter Miles Cleveland Goodwin became a celebration of the spectral qualities of place and home. The artist's gothic imagery of haints and dark orchards haunts the book, wherein the Shenandoah wends, old farmers toil, and ghosts wander a land where change comes on like a flood. There is no escape from this spilling river, the \"Appalachian sea,\" yet for a while we get by and survive. These poems sing of the temporary persistence that makes what surrounds us beloved and strange.","brand":"Steve Scafidi","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43947293409322,"sku":"9780807184714","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/appalachian-sea-poems-1737711.jpg?v=1767955515"},{"product_id":"geography-iii","title":"Geography III","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhether writing about waiting as a child in a dentist's office, viewing a city from a plane high above, or losing items ranging from door keys to one's lover in the masterfully restrained \"One Art,\" Elizabeth Bishop somehow conveyed both large and small emotional truths in language of stunning exactitude and even more astonishing resonance. As John Ashbery has written\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003e\"The private self . . . melts imperceptibly into the large utterance, the grandeur of poetry, which, because it remains rooted in everyday particulars, never sounds 'grand, ' but is as quietly convincing as everyday speech.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Elizabeth Bishop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43947293540394,"sku":"9780374530655","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/geography-iii-2602761.jpg?v=1767955515"},{"product_id":"solutions-for-the-problem-of-bodies-in-space-poems","title":"Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe loneliness that collects in mirrors and faces--at bedside vigils and in city streets--quickens Catherine Barnett's metaphysical poems, which are like speculative prescriptions for this common human experience. Here loneliness is filled with belonging, which is in turn filled with loneliness, each state suffused and emptied by the other. Barnett's fourth collection is part manifesto, part how-to manual, part apologia: a guide to the homeopathic dangers and healing powers of an emotion so charged with eros, humor, and elusive beauty it becomes a companion both desired and eschewed, necessary and illuminating.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSolutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space\u003c\/i\u003e is never far from grief or a comedy of bewilderment, inadequacy, hope. Entering Barnett's world is a little like entering an electrically charged cloud, and the prospect of either falling or getting caught in a storm brings vertiginous and unpredictable pleasures. Bristling with uncanny intelligence, the poems are sometimes quiet elegies, sometimes meditations on art, love, and the failures of love that so often define love. Barnett might be called a realist--her style is radiantly exact--yet somehow she is a guide both into and out of the existential void. She has written a tender, dazzling collection of estrangement and intimacy.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Catherine Barnett","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43947293671466,"sku":"9781644452875","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/solutions-for-the-problem-of-bodies-in-space-poems-8183974.jpg?v=1767955512"},{"product_id":"ruins-of-nostalgia","title":"Ruins of Nostalgia","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNew work from one of the most compelling and transformative writers of the contemporary prose poem\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat is it to feel nostalgia, to be skeptical of it yet cleave intently to the complex truths of feeling and thought? In a series of 64 gorgeous, ramifying, unsettling prose poems addressing late-twentieth- and twenty-first century experience and its discontents, \u003ci\u003e The Ruins of Nostalgia\u003c\/i\u003e offers a strikingly original exploration of the misunderstood phenomenon of nostalgia as both feeling-state and historical phenomenon. Each poem, also titled The Ruins of Nostalgia, is a kind of lyrical mini-essay, playful, passionate, analytic. Some poems take a location, memory, conceit, or object as their theme. Throughout the series, the poems recognize and celebrate the nostalgias they ironize, which are in turn celebrated and then ironized again. Written often in the fictional persona of the first-person plural, \u003ci\u003eThe Ruins of Nostalgia\u003c\/i\u003e explores the rich territory where individual response meets a collective phenomenon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[sample poem]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Ruins of Nostalgia 13\u003cbr\u003eWhere once there had been a low-end stationery store minded by an elderly beauty queen, there was now a store for high-end espresso machines minded by nobody. Where once there had been an illegal beer garden in a weedy lot, there was now a complex of luxury lofts with Parisian-style ivory façades. Where once there had been a bookstore and a bike shop and a bakery, there was now a wax museum for tourists. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been farms there were now subdivisions. Where once there had been subdivisions there were now sub-subdivisions. We lived in a sub-subdivision of a subdivision. We ourselves had become subdivided--where once we had merely been of two minds. * Where once there had been a river there was now a road. A vocal local group had started a movement to break up the road and \"daylight\" the river, which still flowed, in the dark, underneath the road. * Could we daylight the farms, the empty lots, the stationery store, the elderly beauty queen, the city we moved to? Was it still flowing somewhere, under the luxury lofts, deliquescing in the dark, inhabited by our luxury selves, not yet subdivided, because not yet whole? * Could we daylight the ruins of nostalgia?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Donna Stonecipher","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43947293835306,"sku":"9780819500847","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/ruins-of-nostalgia-3778914.jpg?v=1767955512"},{"product_id":"city-in-which-i-love-you","title":"City in Which I Love You","description":"\u003cb\u003eContents\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eI.\u003cbr\u003eFurious Versionis \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eII.\u003cbr\u003eThe Interrogation\u003cbr\u003eThis Hour And What Is Dead\u003cbr\u003eArise, Go Down\u003cbr\u003eMy Father, In Heaven, Is Reading Out Loud\u003cbr\u003eFor A New Citizen Of These United States\u003cbr\u003eWith Ruins \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIII.\u003cbr\u003eThis Room And Everything In It\u003cbr\u003eThe City In Which I Love You \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIV. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe Waiting\u003cbr\u003eA Story\u003cbr\u003eGoodnight\u003cbr\u003eYou Must Sing\u003cbr\u003eHere I Am\u003cbr\u003eA Final Thing \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eV.\u003cbr\u003eThe Cleaving","brand":"Li-Young Lee","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43947293933610,"sku":"9780918526830","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/city-in-which-i-love-you-5997621.jpg?v=1767955511"},{"product_id":"magic-city","title":"Magic City","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn award-winning poet evokes his childhood in Louisiana.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKomunyakaa vividly evokes his childhood in Bogalusa, Louisiana, once a center of Klan activity, and later a focus of Civil Rights efforts. He portrays a child's dawning awareness of the natural and social order around him, rhythms of life in the community, the constant struggle for survival in the face of poverty and racism, the adolescent's awakening sexuality, the beginnings of the poet's awareness of his life and community as it exists in the context of history, and his emerging understanding of his own identity.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yusef Komunyakaa","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43947294097450,"sku":"9780819512086","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/magic-city-7629122.jpg?v=1767955511"}],"url":"https:\/\/thepoetryshop.com\/collections\/poetic-commons-book-club.oembed","provider":"The Poetry Shop LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}