Contemporary Poetry to Savor (A Selection of Recent American Poetry)

(novels in which nature plays a big role)

Click on the title to search the catalog. Use your browser's "Back" button to return to this page.

Carson, Anne - Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera

(818.54 Ca) Not for the traditionalist, these philosophical poems often feature myths. Many are experimental in form. Humorous and bold, Carson takes you to unfamiliar spheres and her poems encourage thought.  As the author says, “We participate in the creation of the world by decreating ourselves."

Collins, Billy - Ballistic

(811.54 Co) Collins is one of the most popular poets today. His humor, wit, and everyday subject matter:  family, neighbors, love, travel, dogs, and Chinese restaurants draw readers in.  But it’s his spiritual depths that keep readers coming back.  A good poet for those who find poetry difficult or unwieldy.

Doty, Mark - Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems
(811.54 Dot) With exquisite language, Doty mines the everyday for eternal truths and feelings.  His work is fierce and luminous, but always connected to the world, to people and landscapes.  He writes about the death of a former lover, of the sea and sea life in Provincetown, and he even describes the world through a dog’s perspective.  Complex, layered poems that aren’t afraid to involve the abstract or the mundane.

Dove, Rita - On the Bus with Rosa Parks

(811.54 Do) Pulitzer-prize winner and former U. S. Poet Laureate, Dove probes African-American history.  Her poems have been compared to “short films with the sound turned down.”  Full of accurate details and historical truths, Dove is a poet who challenges our sense of self and our place in the world.

Gilbert, Jack - The Dance Most of All

(811.54 Gil) This late-life collection shows the poet at the height of his powers. A traveler, Gilbert remembers his Pittsburgh roots and shares adventures in Paris, Greece and Nepal.  His poems are elegiac—he celebrates passion and love and friendship. Some poems are mystical; others are very grounded in space and time.

Gregg, Linda - All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems

(811.54 Gr) Can poetry transport you to the Greek isles? In these poems--a compilation of both old work and new-- you can feel the sun on your face, hear goat bells tinkling on the mountain sides, taste delicious olives and wine.  Memory, love, the birth and death of relationships, Greece, California, and New England all feature in these poems that celebrate a well-lived life. Lyrical, mysterious, and affecting.

Hass, Robert - Time and Materials

(811.54. Has) This multi-award winning poet celebrates the nature and grandeur of the American West, particularly California. His themes are the living world, the bonds of family, the persistence of memory, literature, and the ecological realm.  Influenced by Milosz, Neruda, and Japanese haiku poets, his poetry captures the moment but explores the past and the world around us. Always with exquisite language.

Howe, Maria - The Kingdom of Ordinary Time

(811.54 Ho) The specter of 9/11 hangs over these poems by a New York City poet. Many feature her small daughter and show openness to life as expressed by the very young. Other poems debate movies and why “The Novel is Hard to Read.”  Her section “Poems from the Life of Mary” are breathtakingly modern, but at the same time, reverent.

Kooser, Ted - Flying at Night: Poems, 1965-85

(811.54 Ko) A wide selection from the former national poet laureate’s oeuvre.  Many readers are familiar with this poet from his Sunday newspaper column on poetry.  A practical, down-to-earth, Midwestern poet who celebrates the ordinary and everyday.  Poems are imbued with nature and a sense of history and culture.

Lee, Li-Yung - Behind My Eyes
811.54 Li) A look at America from an immigrant’s perspective, Lee focuses on life, death, and love-- the “flood” subjects of poetry. One poem details the “Virtues of the Boring Husband” and another provides a “Standard Checklist for Amateur Mystics.”  At times, humorous, but always boring to the core of experience, this book also offers a CD of the poet reading his own work, an absolute gift.

Levine, Julia - Ditch-Tender
(811.54 Le) The writer, a practicing child psychotherapist, has seen both the good and bad in life and her poems reveal a strong understanding and sympathy for people and their problems.  She is also a mother of three, and her poems about her children growing up and moving on are heartfelt and tender.  A California poet, she describes the landscape: mountain, rivers, highways, and fog pouring in from the sea.  An uplifting poet who has a precise and lyrical way with language.

Simic, Charles - 60 Poems
(811.54 Si) Dreamlike, sometimes surreal, these poems span a twenty-year period and include poems about the war-torn Yugoslavia of his childhood to the pastoral serenity of his lakeside New Hampshire home.  Simic’s poems are completely idiosyncratic. They are almost perfect little jewels that invite rereading and enrich you more each time.

Wright, Franz - Wheeling Motel
(811.54 Wh) That’s Wheeling, West Virginia, and this talented poet has the almost impossible task of following in his famous father’s foot steps.  James Wright was one of our most acclaimed poets, and he often wrote about this same river city. Many of these poems deal with alcohol and drug abuse and fractured-family relationships. Wright’s poems present modern realities. They don’t belittle them by making them pretty.

 

Catalog View