April – Booklist
April is National Poetry Month. Many people struggle with poetry. This is often a result of past negative learning experiences, a belief it is only for intellectuals, or inaccessible language, a lack of familiarity or exposure, or even a misunderstanding of its purpose. This book list hopes to shift your perspective! Join us in exploring different styles, and focus on your personal connection to the work. We hope you find new ways to engage with this rich and varied art form.
Poetry
Selected Poems by William Blake edited by Peter H. Butter
While Blake’s work was not celebrated in his lifetime, he became one of the better-known poets of the English Romantic Era. Included are selections from “Poetical Sketches,” “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” “Verses and Fragments,” and “Prophetic Books.”
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstien
This collection of 127 madcap poems will bring back childhood memories. Subjects include acrobats, Band-Aids, dancing pants, and sleeping sardines. Written for children but beloved by older readers who love a little whimsy.
Cowboy Curmudgeon and Other Poems by Wallace McRae
McRae began writing poetry over twenty-five years ago to record the values, humor, and plight of his occupation; he leaves no western subject uncovered in these ballad-like tales of cowboy nostalgia.
Life on Mars: Poems by Tracy K. Smith
This Pulitzer Prize winning collection of poems written in 2011 focuses on the universe at large and the meaning of human existence within it. In “Sci-Fi” Smith contemplates a “scrutable and safe” future. In “The Speed of Belief” she reflects on the life and death of her father.
Fiction
Stoner by John Edward Williams
In the early twentieth century, William Stoner’s father, a poor farmer, sends him to study agronomy at the University of Missouri. Instead, the younger Stoner embraces English literature and academia. A destructive marriage, undistinguished career, and doomed love affair with a younger woman send the poetic professor into solitude.
The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse by Vikram Seth
This extraordinary, experimental novel focuses on the soap-operatic tribulations of a group of San Francisco Bay-area yuppies. The entire work consists of 594 sonnets with four metric feet to a line. Love and ethics are the theme and literary references abound.
Nonfiction
These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Life of Emily Dickenson by Martha Ackmann
An engaging, intimate portrait of Emily Dickinson, one of America’s greatest and most-mythologized poets, that sheds new light on her groundbreaking poetry.
A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
With passion and wit, Mary Oliver skillfully imparts expertise from her long, celebrated career as a disguised poet. She walks readers through exactly how a poem is built, from meter and rhyme, to form and diction, to sound and sense, drawing on poems by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others.
Why Poetry by Matthew Zapruder
An award-winning poet argues for the accessibility of poetry and the importance of reading it for all people. The author explores how the ways we are taught to read poetry could be a major hinderance to its enjoyment.
Image Description: A feather plumed pen sits in an battered copper inkwell on top of a well worn wooden desk in front of a turquoise background.