National Poetry Month: April 3rd

April 3, 2016

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were […]


National Poetry Month: April 2nd

April 2, 2016

The White Birds by William Butler Yeats I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee; And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awakened […]


National Poetry Month: April 1st

April 1, 2016

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and […]


April is National Poetry Month

April 1, 2016

If you’re anything like us, you’ve been counting down to this very day.  Besides kick-starting the showers that bring the flowers, April 1st officially makes it next year for the Cubs and finally gives you cause to unleash that new whoopee cushion.  What’s most exciting, however, is that today means National Poetry Month is finally […]


Happy Birthday, Robert Frost!

March 26, 2016

On this day in 1874 the beloved American poet Robert Frost was born in San Francisco.  After his father’s death from tuberculosis in 1885, Frost moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts with his mother and sister, and on November 8, 1894, his first published poem “My Butterfly” appeared in the New York newspaper The Independent.  He eventually […]


Poetry 365: Kevin Young

March 21, 2016

This month for Poetry 365 we’re featuring Kevin Young’s impressive selected volume Blue Laws.  Perfect for those new to his work, this extensive collection includes a hefty helping of unpublished poems along with picks from his nine books including his 1995 debut Most Way Home and his 2012 American Book Award winner Ardency: A Chronicle […]


Poetry 365: Dean Young

February 5, 2016

This month for Poetry 365 we’re highlighting Dean Young’s excellent new book Shock by Shock.  Influenced by the New York School poets and Surrealists such as Andre Breton, this twelfth collection from the Pulitzer Prize finalist is his first of all-new work since undergoing a life-saving heart transplant in 2011.  Slightly more meditative while still […]


National Book Award 2015 Nominees: Poetry

September 15, 2015

Day Two of the ever-so-slowly released National Book Award nominee longlists.  Poetry got real play today with titles well known and appreciated, titles forthcoming and appealing, and titles obscure and alluring.  How many have you read?  Here are the books.  Be sure to follow the links to reserve them in the EPL system:


Poetry 365

July 25, 2015

This month for Poetry 365 we’re featuring Kate Tempest’s extraordinary long poem Brand New Ancients.  Winner of the 2012 Ted Hughes Award, the British poet/rapper/novelist’s second book of verse finds the mythic in the mundane story of half-brothers Thomas and Clive and their violently converging fates in southeast London.  Hypnotic, operatic, and “written to be […]


Poetry 365

May 29, 2015

This month for Poetry 365 we’re highlighting Erin Belieu’s savvy new volume Slant Six.  Crisp and conversational, this fourth collection from the LA Times Book Prize finalist explores “politics, pop culture, and parenthood” while reflecting on “our collective moments of hypocrisy and hope” in contemporary America.  Favorably compared to the work of Frank O’Hara and Tony […]


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