National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month, a celebration of poetry which takes place each April, was introduced in 1996 and is organized by the Academy of American Poets as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. The Academy of American Poets’ website Poets.org serves as a hub for information about local poetry events during the month. The organization also provides free educational resources to teachers for classroom celebrations and activities, and commissions an annual festival poster. Since 1998, National Poetry Month has also been celebrated each April in Canada. Over the years, National Poetry Month has become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets celebrating poetry’s vital place in our culture.

100 Great poems of the Twentieth Century by Mark Strand DB 61179 (Downloadable talking book) / BR 16292

The earliest poems were written a year or so before Updike graduated from college, and they follow in chronological order, charting the course of his life over the next forty years. He writes about his feelings, about mundane things, about natural things, about places, and about almost anything that has to do with the real world. He also writes light verse, which he calls “cartooning with words,” based on the world of information.

Above the river by James A. Wright

DB 33642 (Downloadable talking book)

This posthumous collection of work by Ohio-born James Wright contains all of his poetry beginning with his first book of poems, “The Green Wall,” published in 1957, and including the “Collected Poems,” winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize, and others published after his death in 1980. The book also contains Wright’s translations, several of his prose pieces, and “Lament for a Maker,” a memoir by poet Donald Hall.

American Journal by Tracy K. Smith

DB 92632 (Downloadable talking book) / BR 22469

Collection curated by the United States poet laureate featuring poems that highlight living in America. Sections include “The Small Town of My Youth,” “Something Shines Out from Every Darkness,” “Words Tangled in Debris,” “Here, the Sentence Will Be Respected,” and “One Singing Thing.”

Collected Poems by James Merrill

DB 52545 (Downloadable talking book) / BR 19197

Most of the poetry published in his lifetime by the award-winning American poet James Ingram Merrill (1926-1995), excluding his epic work The Changing Light at Sandover. Contains his earliest poems from 1951, all the poems in the ten trade volumes, his translations from several languages, and his final pieces.

Collected Poems by John Betjeman

DB 64566 (Downloadable talking book)

Verse that evokes traditional English village life and the Victorian era by British poet laureate John Betjeman (1906-1984). Includes “Summoned by Bells” (1960), Betjeman’s classic verse autobiography.

Collected poems by John Updike

DB 38366 (Downloadable talking book)

The earliest poems were written a year or so before Updike graduated from college, and they follow in chronological order, charting the course of his life over the next forty years. He writes about his feelings, about mundane things, about natural things, about places, and about almost anything that has to do with the real world. He also writes light verse, which he calls “cartooning with words,” based on the world of information.

The collected poems of Bertolt Brecht by Bertolt Brecht 

DB 95392 (Downloadable talking book)

Collection of poetry by the author of The Threepenny Opera (DB 08997) and Love Poems (DB 80426). Includes poems about living through the Nazi regime in Germany. Translated from the original German and written between 1913 and 1956.

The Collected poems of Langston Hughes

by Langston Hughes

DB 41265 (Downloadable talking book)

“What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?” asks Langston Hughes in “Harlem [2],” one of 860 poems presented here. Others include “Aesthete in Harlem,” “Beaumont to Detroit: 1943,” “Blues on a Box,” “Easy Boogie,” “Prayer Meeting,” and “Sunset–Coney Island.” Hughes often uses jazz rhythms to share the pain and joy of life in black America from the 1920s to the mid-1960s. The collection is edited by Arnold Rampersad.

The complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou

by Maya Angelou

DB 42918 (Downloadable talking book)

In this collection of more than 150 poems, Angelou celebrates the lives of black people, though many of her poems are universal in their appeal. She uses speech patterns of southern blacks and of the street-wise hip, the currents of blues and jazz, and the rhythm of rap. The collection includes “Still I Rise” and “On the Pulse of Morning.”

The complete Poems by Emily Bronte

DB 38614 (Downloadable talking book)

Poems by the author of the gothic novel Wuthering Heights (DB 25178). The first twenty-one poems were published in 1846 in a volume that also contained poems by her sisters, Charlotte and Anne. Another 169 poems are grouped by their date of composition. Many are known by familiar first lines, including “Will the day be bright and cloudy?” The collection concludes with twelve undated poems and two of doubtful authorship.

The complete poems of Anna Akhmatova

by Anna Akhmatova

DB 33627 (Downloadable talking book)

A professor of Women’s Studies examines the history of all-female jazz bands that flourished in the 1940s. Includes firsthand accounts of more than one hundred women, both white and African American, who performed in ballrooms, theaters, dance halls, military installations, and makeshift USO stages during this era.

Count the Waves: Poems by Sandra Beasley

DB 82813 (Downloadable talking book) / BR 21193

Collection of forty-six poems examining the creation and loss of intimacy during travels, both physical and mental. “The Emperor’s Valentine” compares a relationship to the ways monkeys, turtles, and other wild animals interact with the world.

Favorite poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

DB 34113 (Downloadable talking book)

Selected poems by a nineteenth-century American poet. The collection is divided into five sections: Songs of Memory and Other Lyrics; Story in Song; Poems of Principle; Sonnets; and Excerpts from “Michael Angelo: A Fragment.”

Felicity by Mary Oliver

DB 84944 (Downloadable talking book) / BR 21592

Collection of poems from Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver. In this volume, Oliver explores what it means to love another person, as well as the strangeness and wonder of human connection. Includes, among many others, “Don’t Worry,” “The First Day,” and “What This Is Not.”

Her blue body by Alice Walker

DB 37402 (Downloadable talking book)

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple (RC 18576) presents her poetic output of twenty-five years, beginning with Once, inspired by a trip to Africa in 1965. Walker adds an introduction to each subsequent collection, placing her physical and mental states in context. Her subjects range from suicide notes to a paean to Mother Earth–the title work.

Jimmy’s Blues: selected poems by James Baldwin

DB 30144 (Downloadable talking book)

This collection of poetry by the well-known novelist and essayist offers a poignant commentary on black American life.

New Selected Poems by Phillip Levine

DB 74619 (Downloadable talking book)

Selected poems by a nineteenth-century American poet. The collection is divided into five sections: Songs of Memory and Other Lyrics; Story in Song; Poems of Principle; Sonnets; and Excerpts from “Michael Angelo: A Fragment.”

Notes from the the Air by John Ashbery

DB 71248 (Downloadable talking book)

In his eightieth year, American poet John Ashbery has selected his personal favorites spanning ten published collections–from April Galleons in 1987 through 2005 National Book Award Finalist Where Shall I Wander.

Plays, prose writings and poems by Oscar Wilde

DB 34367 (Downloadable talking book) / BR 09064

First published in 1930, this collection includes “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a novel about a beautiful youth whose portrait has supernatural qualities; “The Importance of Being Earnest,” a comic, satirical play about a rakish nobleman; “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” a comedy of manners; “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” an autobiographical account of Wilde’s imprisonment; and other short works of drama, prose, and poetry.

Poetry and tales by Edgar Allan Poe

DB 96174 (Downloadable talking book)

Collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry and tales presented chronologically to showcase his development as a writer. Includes the five scenes from “Politian,” his one attempt at drama. Edited by Patrick F. Quinn.

Selected Poems by Allen Ginsberg

DB 64404 (Downloadable talking book) / BR 17241

Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) presents a half century of verse in a variety of forms and themes including the political, sexual, devotional, and spiritual. Contains selections from Howl, Kaddish, The Fall of America, Plutonian Ode, White Shroud, and others.

Selected poems by Derek Walcott

DB 66526 (Downloadable talking book)

Poems chosen from fifty-year span of Nobel laureate’s works, from his first published book In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 to his most recent The Prodigal (2004). Many reflect on Walcott’s Caribbean heritage and grapple with his conflicted love of home. Introduction by Edward Baugh.

Selected poems by William Blake

DB 20845 (Downloadable talking book)

Works of the early Romantic English poet. Included are selections from “Poetical Sketches,” “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” “Verses and Fragments,” and “Prophetic Books.”

She Walks in Beauty by Caroline Kennedy

DB 73111 (Downloadable talking book)

President of the John F. Kennedy Foundation arranges poems according to the chronology of a woman’s life: first love, breaking up, marriage, motherhood, death, and grief. Includes works by John Keats, Rumi, Amy Lowell, Robert Browning, and others.

This is my century by Margaret Walker

DB 32737 (Downloadable talking book) / BR 08456

A collection of one hundred pomes by the noted African-American writer, recording more than fifty years of her life as a poet. According to Walker, “The South is my home, and my adjustment or accommodation to this South…is the subject and source of all my poetry. It is also my life.” Selections include “For My People,” “Prophets for a New Day,” and “October Journey.”

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By T. Herbison