Make Room for Poetry

Posted Apr 8, 2016

April is National Poetry Month. Celebrate by discovering or rediscovering poetry old and new. Here are a few of our top picks:

Something New

Ramshackle Ode by Keith Leonard

Pushcart Prize nominee Keith Leonard’s first collection of poetry transcendentally reflects on manhood, relationships, and our society. It's being described as fresh and glittering, and in the celebratory traditional of Whitman.

Rediscover

A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century by Jerome Charyn

A new literary biography of one of america’s most-loved and most mysterious poets. Charyn reveals a woman quite different from the lonely spinster we are all used to: a sexual woman engaged with herself and the world in a deeply philosophical way.

Last Year's Best

Bastards of the Reagan Era by Dwayne Reginald

Named one of 2015’s best books by Booklist, Betts tackles race, social justice, and the future of our society, framed in his love for his children. (Bonus read-alike: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me)