7 Excellent Collections to Celebrate National Poetry Month
April is National Poetry Month and we here at Dog-Eared Books are champing at the bit to give y’all some recommendations for poetry collections we love and absolutely can’t stop thinking about. And I know some of you may be thinking “oh, I don’t read poetry,” or “I don’t like poetry” or “I don’t get poetry.” When I taught first-year English, my college kiddos would say some iteration of this all the time. Somehow, an idea had gotten pressed into their brains that poetry was something to be “gotten,” that you had to have some kind of decoder key to unlock the true secret at the heart of every poem, and most of them didn’t want to do that work (or were made to believe they weren’t smart enough to).
That, dear readers, is garbage. Poetry is as vast and diverse as any other genre, and you wouldn’t say you hate or don’t like all novels simply because you don’t like Hemingway. Some poems will click with you, some won’t. Either way that’s okay. And if you want to try to get into the genre, April is a great month to try, and these collections are great places to start. Happy discoveries and happy reading!
Space Struck by Paige Lewis
I discovered this little volume when it was sent to me as part of a subscription service/book club run by John Green (yes, that John Green who wrote my favorite book The Anthropocene Reviewed) and a friend of his called Life’s Library. Sadly, this club ended a couple years ago, but this book was one of the delights I was given. A debut (?!) collection, Lewis explores the boundaries of self, time, space, and knowledge, sending readers out to the stars and back. Some of my favorites from this collection are “On the Train a Man Snatches My Book” with the lines “…I feel / as if I’m on the moon listening to the air hiss / out of my spacesuit, and I can’t find the hole. I’m / the vice president of panic, and the president is / missing…” running through my brain all the time.
I also love “The River Reflects Nothing” (“We are only remembered as cruel when / what we harm does not die quickly…”) and “The Terre Haute Planetarium Rejected My Proposal” (“…I come from the same place / as everyone else, the place where people take and the taking becomes / its own person. Where everyone hurts / and gets hurt, and the hurt can be heard asking the same question—Why isn’t anybody / stopping this? And the powerfully worse take / a vote, they elect their answer carefully: / Stopping what?”). It’s moving and sharp and their lines are the same shape as my brain.
Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones
Several of us at Dog-Eared were so lucky as to see Jones speak at Fall Forum this past October, and he wowed us as much in person as he did with this poetry collection. Witty, sharp, and heavy with emotion, this collection meditates on sexuality, grief, and race, returning to the words “Alive at the End of the World” for multiple poems throughout the volume. It has become a staff favorite (Event Coordinator Emily even chose this as her staff pick for April!) and I think you’ll love it too. Stand out poems from this are legion, but here are some that I really love: “The Dead Dozens” with the stanza “You love your mama so much, / Freud came back from the dead / just to study your sorry ass.”
Then there’s “Heritage” which opens with these lines that always gut me “…In Mississippi, / red white and blue don’t mean ‘remember / this is America.’ They mean ‘history is a gun / and every bullet in its chamber wants you / to forget.’…” And lastly, I’ll leave you with the first poem in the collection “Alive at the End of the World” in which Jones writes “…In America, a gathering of people / is called target practice or a funeral, / depending on who lives long enough / to define the terms. But for now, we / are alive at the end of the world,…”. Have some tissues ready if you decide to try this one.
Devotions by Mary Oliver
I tried to focus mostly on newer collections for this list, but how could I write about poetry without mentioning one of the all time greats, Mary Oliver? Perhaps best known for her poem “Wild Geese” (“You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting…”) Devotions is a collection excerpted from her long, prolific career and is an excellent choice for anyone wanting to get started reading poetry. There are too many amazing ones to list, but ones that hold a special place in my heart are “Don’t Hesitate” which starts with the lines “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, / don’t hesitate. Give into it…” and “Yes! No!” with the always relevant words “How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout / lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth. I / think serenity is not something you just find in the world, / …To pay attention, this is our endless / and proper work.” If you are a fan of Braiding Sweetgrass or any of Sy Montgomery’s work, you will love Mary Oliver, whose entire ethos is looking at her life and the world with grace, joy, and benediction.
Above Ground by Clint Smith
Smith’s first full poetry collection Counting Descent is a favorite of mine, as is his nonfiction prose work How the Word is Passed which explores the legacy of slavery in America through the lens of several different physical locations. He shines in whatever genre he writes and this volume does so with particular brilliance. Exploring the ways in which our lives are shaped and affected by both historical context and personal lineages and informed by the birth of his own children, Smith uses poetry to try to get at so many different emotions with generosity and wisdom.
A favorite from this one is “All at Once” which gets right at the ideas always racing in my mind—”…There is a funeral procession in the morning and a wedding in the afternoon. The river that gives us water to drink is the same one that might wash us away.” But the one that has stuck with me the most is “When People Say ‘We Have Made it Through Worse Before’”—again I recommend you read the entirety of this one, even if its the only one you read. Smith writes “all I hear is the wind slapping against all the gravestones / of those who did not make it, those who did not / survive to see the confetti fall from the sky…/…We are not all left standing after the war has ended. Some of us have / become ghosts by the time the dust has settled.” Do yourself a favor and pick this one up for yourself.
Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson
Andrea Gibson is a beat poet, and their work is best when heard, but their written work always hits me full on in the chest. I read deep in a reading slump and it more than got me out of it—I even included lines from one of the poems in my wedding vows. Deft, delicate but weighty with emotion and imagery, this collection addresses a wide variety of topics from romance to gender to identity to loss and family. Lord of the Butterflies is a volume easy to get into, and I think it would make a great read for anyone trying to get into poetry. Some favorite poems are “Ivy” (…Three hours I lay awake, your shoulder/kissing my shoulder. Three hours I stared/at the window, loving you, then turned/toward your ear and whispered that I had to go./…I went to wherever the ivy goes in winter,/and for the same reason.”), “Dear Trump Voter” (“The Nazis built gas chambers, in part, to save the humanity of the firing squad. Some general looked into the eyes of his men firing into the scream of children… and the general thought, ‘If we keep forcing these men to kill like this, what is human in them will die. Their guilt will be ungovernable.’ The Holocaust needed its killers to believe they were not the killers.”) and “Living Proof” which I would pull from here, but the whole thing is so integral that to pull a line would be to do it a disservice—pick up this book, read it, and then sob like I did when I first read it. And of course, the poem that I just had to say to my husband, “Letter to the Editor”—but I’ll leave specific lines said to stay between us.
How to Love the World ed. by James Crews
This collection is a bit different from all the others on this list—instead of being a compilation of poems all from the same writer, this is a curated set of poems chosen by editor James Crews all loosely bound by the titular theme of learning to love the world. The poems inside are all deeply-felt, uplifting, and relatable pieces from well-known poets, gracious in their worldview and brimming with hopeful gratitude. A favorite of both mine and Bookseller Amy’s, this collection is also unique because it has small sections following certain poems that ask questions and prompt thoughtful responses and introspection. Not only is this a great collection to get yourself, it’s beautiful and singular enough to be an excellent gift, too. Some highlights for me are Molly Fisk’s “Against Panic” which says “…Oh, friend, search your memory again— / beauty and relief are still there, only sleeping.” and Linda Hogan’s “Innocence” wherein she writes “Watching things grow, / wondering how / a cut blade of grass knows / how to turn sharp again at the end. / This same growing must be myself, / not aware yet of what I will become / in my own fullness / inside this simple flesh.” This collection is perfect for sitting in a moment of stillness in the morning with a warm cup of coffee and the sun peeking over the horizon.
Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
Probably best known for his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong is a master of his craft. We love his first collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, but Time is a Mother, written after the runaway success of his first novel and the death of his beloved mother, is a true representation of great craft. Using achingly specific language, experiences, and imagery, Vuong takes the deeply personal details of his own suffering and makes it universal. He makes use of traditional poetry styles but also experiments with form and this, combined with the emotionality, make this an accessible and rewarding book to take your time with. I particularly love “Snow Theory” (“How else do we return to ourselves but to fold / The page so it points to the good part”), “Beautiful Short Loser” (“Oh no. The sadness is intensifying. How rude.”), and “Not Even” which is a particularly long piece with several lines I’d like to highlight—”Because everyone knows yellow pain, pressed into American / letters, turns to gold. / Our sorrow Midas touched.” and “I can say it was gorgeous now, my harm, because it belonged/ to no one else. / To be a dam for damage…/ Time is a mother.” Named one of the best books of 2022 by plenty of different outlets, this is a standout collection from a contemporary poetry master.
I hope this motivates you to go out and pick up a volume of poetry so that you can find the joy and deep well of emotions that I have been able to explore through this genre. If you already love it, what are some of your favorite poems or poets?
